JBS will be back up and running Wednesday after its hack. But for some employees, that’s too late

By Brian Fung, CNN Business

When Erika Gutierres found out about the devastating cyberattack that shut down all beef production at JBS facilities nationwide this week, she knew she was in trouble.

A single mom, Gutierres works on the killing floor at JBS’s facility in Cactus, Texas, handling beef hearts, livers, tails and intestines. After receiving text messages from her employer saying not to come to work on Tuesday, Gutierres now says the hackers caused far more damage than they likely knew. Not to JBS’s operations — the company has said most of its plants will be back online on Wednesday — but to the many workers who were forced to miss out on pay.

Gutierres was already struggling, she told CNN in an interview. She lives paycheck-to-paycheck, making $24 an hour, or about $800 a week after taxes. Now, because of the hack, she expects to fall a week behind on her rent, babysitting fees and gas expenses for her car, which she needs to get to work.

“It sounds, like, so small — ‘It’s two days off, get some rest,'” Gutierres said. “But to me, it’s the end of the world, because those two days were everything. I’m going to be short on all my bills, and that stresses me out and makes my life a lot harder.”

What happened?

Meat producer JBS closed nine of its US beef processing plants on Tuesday following a cyberattack that took down its IT systems, but the company plans to restore operations on Wednesday and has told employees to return to work.

Facebook pages that purport to represent several JBS beef facilities across various parts of the country indicated on Tuesday evening that normal business would soon resume. A plant in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said it would open Wednesday on a four-hour delay. A plant in Cactus, Texas said many of its operations would resume with its B-shift schedule. And a plant in Grand Island, Neb. said all of its departments would reopen on a normal schedule.

The hack, which the White House described Tuesday as ransomware, affected all of JBS’s US meatpacking facilities, according to an official at the United Food and Commercial Workers union that represents JBS employees. The cyberattack resulted in the closure of all US beef plants, which are located in states including Arizona, Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the union official said.

In a statement late Tuesday, JBS said “the vast majority” of its beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods operations will be running on Wednesday.

“Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat,” said Andre Nogueira, the CEO of JBS USA.

JBS did not immediately respond to questions from CNN about the hackers’ demands or whether the company paid the ransom.

What it means for employees

Some employees may gain an extra Saturday shift to make up for this week’s downtime, Gutierres said, but by then the damage will have been done — and many of her fellow workers had already made family plans for the weekend, meaning the fallout from the hack may last much longer for some than it may seem to others.

“I am very grateful for everything JBS has done for me. JBS has given me a lot,” she said. “But these hackers just messed up everything for me.”