Overview
Jien v. Perdue Farms is a landmark labor antitrust class action that helped redefine how antitrust law can protect workers. The lawsuit alleged that major poultry companies, including Perdue Farms Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. shared compensation data and coordinated practices that suppressed wages for poultry-processing workers. It resulted in $398.05 million in settlements, the second-largest labor antitrust recovery in U.S. history, second only to In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, and major reforms to industry data-sharing practices. Perhaps more importantly, the court recognized that employers’ compensation-information exchanges can harm competition in labor markets and that third-party data aggregators may face antitrust scrutiny. The case became a foundational precedent for applying antitrust law to combat wage suppression and protect low-wage workers.
Important Rulings
- On March 10, 2026, the Honorable Stephanie A. Gallagher of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland granted final approval of an injunctive relief settlement against Agri Stats, a data aggregator for the agricultural industry, that allegedly shared compensation data between the poultry defendants.
- On June 5, 2025, the court granted final approval to a total $398.05 million in settlements, ending the litigation against the poultry defendants.
- On October 8, 2019, the court appointed Cohen Milstein to serve as Interim Co-Lead Counsel
Case Background
On August 30, 2019, Cohen Milstein and co-counsel filed a putative class action case, alleging that, since 2009, Perdue Farms Inc., Tyson Foods Inc., Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., and more than dozen other chicken producers have conspired to depress the hourly wages paid to vulnerable workers in their chicken processing plants in violation of federal antitrust laws. The case was the first such class action in the country and was based on an independent factual investigation.
The plaintiffs seek to represent a class of non-supervisory production and maintenance workers at chicken processing plants in the continental United States. These workers perform dangerous yet essential jobs for defendants, such as hanging live chickens on a slaughter line, slaughtering the birds, and repairing the slaughter equipment. According to a 2015 report by Oxfam America, “the rates of injuries and illness” in chicken processing plants “are shockingly high.” Yet plant workers earn wages that place them near or below the poverty line.
Given the grueling nature of chicken processing, the high risk of physical injury in defendants’ processing plants, and the low wages chicken processors receive, many have no interest in working in the chicken processing industry, and defendants recruit workers who have limited alternative options for employment. As Debbie Berkowitz, OSHA’s former Senior Policy Adviser, observed, chicken processing is “an industry that targets the most vulnerable group of workers and brings them in. And when one group gets too powerful and stands up for their rights, they figure out who’s even more vulnerable and move them in.” Over the past decade, processing plants have relied heavily on migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, immigrants employed under EB3 visas, prison laborers, and participants in court-ordered substance abuse programs.
Defendants are alleged to have conspired to fix worker compensation below fair market levels while the chicken industry reaped record profits. Plaintiffs’ extensive private investigation of this illegal scheme revealed that defendants used a three-prong strategy: (1) they conducted “off the books” in-person meetings where they discussed and ultimately set the wages and benefits paid to chicken processing plant workers; (2) they exchanged detailed, timely and competitively sensitive wage data through two survey companies, Agri Stats and WMS; and (3) they engaged in bilateral and regional plant-to-plant exchanges of current and projected compensation data.