St. Albans Dairy Strike Strikes at Heart of National Power Struggle
The walkout was targeted at a facility already weakened by legal and environmental troubles, and it employs a sophisticated legal strategy that could have consequences for workers across the country.
When union workers walked off the job at the Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) plant in St. Albans on September 26, the story seemed familiar: a local contract dispute over wages, hours, and benefits. But the picket signs and public statements tell only a fraction of the story.
The St. Albans strike is not an isolated Vermont issue. It is a calculated, strategic front in a national conflict between one of America’s most powerful unions and its largest dairy cooperative. The walkout was targeted at a facility already weakened by significant legal and environmental troubles, and it employs a sophisticated legal strategy that could have consequences for workers across the country. To understand the full picture—for the workers, the company, Vermont’s farmers, and major brands like Ben & Jerry’s—one has to look far beyond the St. Albans city limits.
A National Fight Comes to Vermont
The strike in Franklin County is a single battle in a much larger war. According to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, this is a coordinated national campaign against Dairy Farmers of America involving approximately 2,000 workers at 35 different DFA facilities where 19 separate collective bargaining agreements have expired. Recent strikes and strike authorizations at other DFA-owned plants in Iowa and New Mexico are part of this same national effort.
While the St. Albans workers are fighting for an end to mandatory 12-hour shifts and for better wages and benefits, the national union has two crucial, long-term goals that transcend any single contract:
Protections Against Automation: The Teamsters are fighting to win contract language that protects workers from losing their jobs to technology. As DFA and other companies invest heavily in highly automated facilities, the union is attempting to secure a future for its members in a rapidly changing industry.
A Common Contract Expiration Date: The union aims to align the expiration dates for all 19 of its disparate DFA contracts. According to labor experts, this is a classic power-consolidating maneuver. It would prevent the company from negotiating with local unions one by one and create the potential for a future, massive nationwide strike that could paralyze a significant portion of the U.S. milk supply, dramatically increasing the union’s bargaining leverage.
This national strategy, according to union leaders, is designed to weaponize the dairy industry’s greatest vulnerability: the perishable, “just-in-time” nature of the milk supply chain.
A Company Under Pressure
The Teamsters’ choice of the St. Albans plant as a strike location appears highly strategic. The facility is not just another DFA plant; it is a nexus of compounding legal, regulatory, and labor challenges, making it a uniquely vulnerable target where a strike could apply maximum pressure.
Just two months before the strike, in July 2025, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office announced it had settled an environmental enforcement case with the facility. According to the state, the plant was required to pay a $210,500 civil penalty for multiple, serious violations, including the illegal discharge of “substantial amounts of raw milk and cream” into the municipal wastewater system that flows into a tributary of Lake Champlain.
Concurrently, DFA is defending itself in a major class-action antitrust lawsuit filed in Vermont’s federal court. The lawsuit alleges that DFA has created a “monopsony”—a market with a single buyer—that allows it to depress the prices paid to dairy farmers for their raw milk. The suit specifically identifies DFA’s controversial 2019 merger with the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery as a pivotal event that harmed farmers, according to the legal filings.
For management in St. Albans, the strike is not a single-front battle over a labor contract. It is a multi-front war involving state regulators, federal courts, and now a determined national union.
The Legal Chess Match: Why “Unfair Labor Practice” Matters
One of the most critical and least understood aspects of the dispute is the union’s legal framing. Teamsters Local 597 publicly claims the strike was initiated after DFA violated the union contract by bringing in temporary workers without notification. This is more than a simple grievance; it is a calculated legal maneuver.
Under the federal National Labor Relations Act, there is a crucial distinction between two types of strikes:
An Economic Strike is over issues like higher wages or better benefits. In this situation, an employer has the legal right to hire permanent replacements for the striking workers. This is a powerful company weapon, as workers risk losing their jobs for good.
An Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) Strike is a protest against an employer’s illegal action, such as violating the terms of an existing contract. In a ULP strike, workers have much stronger protections. They cannot be permanently replaced and are entitled to immediate reinstatement to their jobs when the strike ends.
By immediately and publicly declaring the walkout a response to DFA’s alleged contract violation, the Teamsters are strategically building the legal foundation to classify the strike as a ULP action. This move is designed to neutralize the threat of permanent replacement, fundamentally altering the risk for every striking employee and shifting leverage from the company to the union. According to National Labor Relations Board records, this is not the first sign of friction; the union filed a prior ULP charge against this same plant in December 2023, establishing a documented history of formal labor conflict.
The Ripple Effect Across Vermont’s Dairy Landscape
The shutdown of the St. Albans plant sends shockwaves through Vermont’s entire dairy ecosystem, affecting everyone from the farmer to the consumer and highlighting deep divisions within the industry’s labor force.
The first and hardest hit are DFA’s own farmer-owners. With the plant not accepting milk, farmers are forced to dump their highly perishable product, resulting in a total loss of income. This creates a powerful internal conflict, pitting the cooperative’s farmer-owners against the unionized workers who process their product.
Downstream, major commercial customers like Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot Creamery, which rely on the St. Albans plant for ingredients, face potential production disruptions. A prolonged strike could force these iconic Vermont brands to seek alternative suppliers, potentially impacting product availability and consumer costs.
The conflict also casts a harsh light on the “invisible workforce” that is the foundation of Vermont’s dairy industry. While unionized plant workers fight for better wages and protections, an estimated 94% of the state’s dairy farms employ a largely non-unionized, often undocumented migrant farmworker population. According to advocacy groups like Migrant Justice, these workers have faced systemic issues, including sub-minimum wage pay and hazardous working conditions, all while lacking the legal protections and collective power of the striking Teamsters.
This places a company like Ben & Jerry’s in a particularly complex position. The ice cream maker’s own St. Albans production workers recently ratified their first union contract. The company also has a public history with farmworker rights through the “Milk with Dignity” program. The strike pits its key supplier against a union, forcing the socially-conscious brand into a difficult silence.
What This Means for Vermont
The strike at the DFA plant in St. Albans is far more than a local dispute. It is a manifestation of a national power struggle, a sophisticated legal battle over workers’ rights, and a stress test for Vermont’s entire dairy economy.
A rapid resolution appears unlikely. The stakes are high for both sides. DFA is not merely negotiating a single contract; it is trying to prevent the Teamsters from setting a national precedent on issues like automation. The union, in turn, is executing a coordinated national strategy on a battleground where its opponent is already weakened.
For Vermonters, there are no easy villains or heroes. There are union workers fighting for job security in a demanding industry. There is a farmer-owned cooperative managing a national business while facing serious legal and environmental challenges. And there are dairy farmers, other local businesses, and a vast migrant workforce caught in the middle. Understanding this strike requires seeing all of these layers. The outcome could set a new course not just for a creamery in St. Albans, but for the future of the American food industry and the workers who power it.