BALTIMORE, March 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, a federal judge granted final approval of an industry-changing injunctive relief settlement against Agri Stats, Inc., a data vendor for the poultry industry. This approval follows the court granting final approval of $398.05 million in settlements last June and ends a first-of-its kind wage suppression class action against 18 of the nation’s leading poultry producers.
The total settlement is the largest recovery ever in an antitrust class action for low-wage workers in the United States; the second-largest recovery ever in a wage-fixing class action in the United States; and the largest financial recovery ever in an antitrust class action in the Fourth Circuit.
Poultry processing plant workers, who hang, slaughter, and debone chickens and turkeys, claimed that since 2000, the country’s leading poultry producers conspired to lower corporate labor costs by suppressing their wages and benefits. The poultry producers own and operate over 200 processing plants, hatcheries, and feed mills nationwide. The lawsuit alleged that they carried out this scheme by sharing competitively sensitive compensation data through, in part, industry data vendors like Agri Stats.
“For decades, tens of thousands of hard-working poultry plant workers have been exploited by their employers who schemed with competitors to depress their wages below fair market levels,” said Brent Johnson, co-chair of the Antitrust practice group at Cohen Milstein who led the firm’s litigation team. “Our co-lead counsel team is grateful for the opportunity to help these workers achieve long, overdue justice and financial relief for this misconduct and to the Court for approving the settlements. We are also pleased that Agri Stats has agreed to aggregate relevant labor data in broiler chicken reports.”
Specifically, as a part of the injunctive relief settlement, Agri Stats has agreed to eliminate relevant plant-level data fields related to labor costs in its broiler chicken reports that it circulates to subscribers.
Filed in 2019, the poultry workers claimed that their employers formed, implemented, monitored, and enforced the wage suppression conspiracy in three ways:
- First, senior executives, including human resources executives and directors of compensation, held recurring “off the books” in-person meetings where worker compensation was discussed and set.
- Second, on a highly frequent basis, defendants exchanged detailed, non-public wage and benefits information through surveys conducted by data vendors like Agri Stats.
- Third, managers at the poultry processing plants engaged in bilateral and regional exchanges of wage and benefits information, including future plans.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against many of the same poultry producers, alleging a long-running conspiracy to suppress worker pay with the same allegations uncovered by the extensive independent private investigation by co-lead counsel.
Oxfam, a global think tank that fights economic inequality and poverty, has reported that plant workers in the U.S. poultry industry earn wages that put them near or below the poverty line.
The plaintiffs in Jien, et al. v. Perdue Farms, Inc., et al. were represented by co-lead counsel Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and Berger Montague and Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.
About Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, a premier U.S. plaintiffs’ law firm, with over 100 attorneys across eight offices, champions the causes of real people – workers, consumers, small business owners, investors, and whistleblowers – working to deliver corporate reforms and fair markets for the common good. For more information visit https://www.cohenmilstein.com
Contact: cohenmilstein@berlinrosen.com
