By Deena Shanker and Polly Mosendz
Bloomberg
Sep. 3, 2019 10:44 AM PT
Companies producing more than 90% of America’s chicken have conspired to depress wages for a largely immigrant workforce in some of the nation’s most dangerous jobs, according to a lawsuit.
The case filed last week is mostly based on interviews with former employees, and it alleges that a conspiracy among 18 companies, their subsidiaries and affiliates and two consulting firms continues today. It was filed on behalf of three former workers but seeks class-action status for hundreds of thousands, many with limited language skills and few other prospects for employment.
Since 2009, leaders of the firms’ human resources and compensation departments have held annual secret meetings at a Destin, Fla., hotel to discuss pay and benefits for line and maintenance workers at about 200 plants, according to the complaint in federal court in Baltimore. Using consulting agencies as intermediaries, the suit says, they share detailed wage information. It says plant managers also cooperate, for example, by calling each other when one announces an expansion to find out what new positions will pay.
Chicken producers aren’t new to being on the receiving end of litigation. Three years ago, a class-action lawsuit filed by Maplevale Farm, a food distributor, accused them of price fixing enabled by the Indiana-based data company Agri Stats Inc. Lawsuits from consumers, distributors, grocery chains and food companies followed, and this summer the Justice Department intervened. It asked the court to halt proceedings while it pursued its own criminal investigation.
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