Workers at the Dairy Farmers of America processing plant in St. Albans, Vt., can hold onto their jobs this week after a federal judge issued a restraining order to temporarily halt a planned closure.
In a complaint filed Friday, the Teamsters Local No. 597 requested the order, claiming that multiple supervisors told some employees that the decision to close the plant was related to last year’s strike.
The union said the DFA’s decision to idle the plant was an illegal act of retaliation.
The complaint also describes what the union says is an internal memo found by a janitor last week that labels “union decertification” as the “#1 reason” for the closure. A legal representative for DFA called the memo “fake” in an email to the union, which was attached to the court filings.
At the time of the complaint’s filing, the union said DFA had begun shutting down operations, including largely ceasing milk processing and drastically reducing labor hours.
The temporary restraining order, issued Monday by U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III, will last for five days. The district court will hold a hearing Thursday afternoon, where the union will argue for a longer stay until its grievances are resolved, in keeping with the collective bargaining agreements made with DFA.
DFA rejected any attempt to link the closure to union activities. “First and foremost, neither the union nor the 2025 strike was the reason for the closure of the St. Albans plant,” DFA’s lawyer said in the email to the union. The company also said in a Facebook post that the closure was due to broader operational and network changes.
In July, Jesse Case, director of the Teamsters Food Processing Division, which includes Local No. 597, alleged the shutdown was payback for union activity.
“Dairy Farmers of America is shutting down its St. Albans facility and eliminating good union jobs in what appears to be retaliation against members of Teamsters Local 597, who were forced to strike last year after the company refused to negotiate a fair contract,” he said in a statement. “This closure is not an isolated business decision. It is the result of a broader strategy by DFA to consolidate market share and power across the dairy industry.”
Vermont’s U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch wrote a letter Tuesday to DFA President and CEO Dennis Rodenbaugh urging the co-op to keep the plant open and reach a fair agreement with the union.
“At a time when Vermont’s family dairy farms are already facing enormous economic pressures, losing an important piece of the processing infrastructure that connects those farms to markets creates another serious challenge,” they said in the letter. “We are very concerned that Vermont dairy farmers were not consulted before this decision and will face even steeper costs as a result of this idling.”
The St. Albans plant and the adjoining St. Albans Creamery & Supply have operated in the county for decades, with the factory producing dairy for Vermont vendors, including Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot Creamery. The June closure announcement came after St. Albans Creamery & Supply announced last summer that it would close its co-op grocery store and transition solely into a retail business. It also followed the plant’s unionized workers’ reaching a contract with Dairy Farmers of America in October 2025, after alleging “brutal” working conditions, including mandatory overtime that extended their shifts into 12-hour workdays.
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