Chicken Industry Accused of Conspiring to Keep Immigrant Wages Down
Published:
Tue, Sep 3rd 2019 @ 2:57 pm EDT
According to a new lawsuit, 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. As reported by Bloomberg News, the lawsuit filed last week is mostly based on interviews with former employees and claims the conspiracy among 18 companies, their subsidiaries, affiliates, and two consulting firms continues to this day. Filed on behalf of three former workers, the lawsuit is now seeking class-action status for hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom are immigrants or aliens with limited language skills resulting in few other prospects for employment.
Since 2009, leaders of the firms’ human resources and compensation departments have held annual secret meetings at a Destin, Florida, hotel to discuss pay and benefits for line and maintenance workers at about 200 plants, according to the complaint in Baltimore federal court. Using consulting agencies as intermediaries, the suit says, they share detailed wage information. Plant managers also cooperate, for example calling each other when one announces an expansion to find out what new positions will pay, the lawsuit says. In addition, this is not the first time the U.S. chicken industry has been on the receiving end of legal scrutiny, in 2016 a class-action lawsuit filed by Maplevale Farm, a food distributor, accused the industry of price-fixing. Lawsuits from consumers, distributors, grocery chains and food companies followed, and this summer the Justice Department intervened.
https://www.numbersusa.com/news/chicken-industry-accused-conspiring-keep-immigrant-wages-down
