Poultry Processing Plant Wage-Fixing Litigation

Berger Montague is on the executive committee of this pay depression case filed on behalf of non-supervisory production and maintenance employees at chicken processing plants. There are $339 million in settlements to date.  

The class action lawsuit was filed against 18 chicken processing companies, including but not limited to Perdue Farms, Tyson Foods, The Hillshire Brands Company, Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, and Koch Foods. Defendants also include two consulting companies—Agri Stats and WMS—that were alleged to have facilitated the exchange of compensation data. Collectively, the companies own and operate approximately 200 chicken processing plants that employ hundreds of thousands of workers and produce more than 90 percent of chicken sold in the United States.

The lawsuit alleges that for more than a decade, defendant chicken processing companies conspired to fix wages for plant workers that was below fair market levels by conducting “off the books” meetings at a Hilton Hotel in Dresden, Florida where senior executives (including those in HR) collectively established the wages and benefits each company offered its workers. The lawsuit also alleges that each defendant company subscribed to survey companies Agri Stats and WMS to exchange and receive on a monthly basis hourly wage rates from each company’s plants. This data was used, the complaint alleges, to ensure that one company didn’t deviate from the conspiracy. Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that companies’ plants shared current as well as projected future wages via methods such as telephone calls and surveys. 

An economic analysis revealed that these methods caused the wages of workers at chicken plant processing plants to increase at a rate slower than those received by plant workers employed by manufacturers outside the poultry industry, and that wages of chicken processing plant workers were lower than those employed at non-poultry processing plants.

To date, settlements total $339 million. These include a $29 settlement with Pilgrim’s Pride; a $60.7 million settlement with Perdue Farm; an $84.8 million combined settlement with Cargill Meat Solutions, Sanderson Farms and Wayne Farms; and a $22 million settlement with Case Foods Inc. and Mountaire Farms. 

About Berger Montague

Berger Montague is one of the nation’s preeminent law firms focusing on complex civil litigation, class actions and mass torts in federal and state courts throughout the United States. The firm is active in the fields of antitrust, commercial litigation, consumer protection, defective products, environmental law, employment law, securities and whistleblower cases, among other practice areas. For more than 50 years Berger Montague has played leading roles in precedent-setting cases and has recovered over $60 billion for its clients and the classes they have represented. Berger Montague is headquartered in Philadelphia and has offices in Chicago, Minneapolis, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, DE.