Perdue Lawsuit: $398M Wage-Fixing Settlement, Child Labor, PFAS

Perdue Farms has been named in several major lawsuits over the past few years. The largest is the Perdue lawsuit brought by chicken plant workers, Jien v. Perdue Farms, which resulted in Perdue paying $60.65 million as part of a $398 million antitrust class action settlement over alleged wage-fixing among poultry processors. Perdue has also settled a parallel beef and pork wage-fixing case for $1.25 million, paid $4 million plus a $150,000 civil penalty to resolve a federal child labor investigation at its Accomac, Virginia plant, and is defending an ongoing PFAS contamination suit brought by neighbors of its Salisbury, Maryland facility. The company denies wrongdoing in each matter it has settled.

The Poultry Wage-Fixing Class Action

The case was filed on August 30, 2019, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on behalf of non-supervisory production and maintenance workers at chicken processing plants nationwide. Formally captioned Jien, et al. v. Perdue Farms, Inc., et al. (Case No. 1:19-cv-02521), the suit alleged that beginning at least as early as 2009, major poultry producers coordinated to hold worker pay down in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.¹

Twenty-five defendants were named, including Perdue, Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Koch Foods, Sanderson Farms, Wayne Farms, Cargill, Mountaire Farms, Butterball, and Jennie-O Turkey Store. Two data consulting firms, Agri Stats and Webber, Meng, Sahl and Company (WMS), were named as well for their alleged role in facilitating the scheme.² Together those companies operated about 200 plants and produced over 90 percent of the chicken sold in the United States.³

Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher granted final approval to the combined settlements on June 5, 2025. The total was $398.05 million, all non-reversionary, meaning none of it goes back to the companies regardless of how many claims are filed.¹ Tyson Foods paid the most at $115.5 million. Perdue Farms and Perdue Foods paid $60.65 million, with preliminary approval granted on April 3, 2023.⁴ Plaintiffs’ counsel called it the largest recovery ever in a U.S. antitrust class action on behalf of low-wage workers.

How the Alleged Wage Suppression Worked

The complaint described three mechanisms. First, senior executives from human resources and compensation departments met each year at the Hilton Sandestin Resort in Destin, Florida. The gatherings were timed to coincide with the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association’s annual Human Resource Seminar but were not listed on the official schedule. Attendees reviewed detailed compensation surveys produced by WMS, then held private roundtable discussions in which they allegedly reached agreements on pay rates.⁵ The complaint alleged Perdue employees attended every annual compensation meeting from 2001 through 2019.⁶

Second, the companies exchanged granular pay data through Agri Stats and WMS. Both firms said the data was anonymized, but the complaint alleged it was detailed enough for executives to identify which competitor produced which figure. A former Perdue employee described the company’s CEO as an “Agri Stats guru and nut” and said Agri Stats staff trained management on extracting competitor information from the reports.⁵

Third, managers at individual plants contacted counterparts at rival facilities directly, by phone or email, to trade current and planned wage figures. A former human resources manager who worked at both Perdue and George’s described the practice in testimony cited in the complaint: “We would collaborate. We would talk among each other to see what they were doing for pay.”⁶

Who Gets Paid and When

The settlement class covers anyone who worked at a defendant’s poultry processing plant, hatchery, feed mill, or complex in the United States at any point between January 1, 2000, and July 20, 2021.⁷ Workers who received a mailed or emailed notice were automatically included and did not need to file a claim, though they were asked to update their contact and employment information at poultrywages.com. Workers who did not receive a notice had to submit a Participation Form with proof of employment such as a pay stub or employee ID, along with tax documentation. A.B. Data, Ltd. is the claims administrator.⁸

Payments are pro rata, based on how long a worker was employed and how much they earned. The participation deadline was October 29, 2025, and the first distribution is scheduled to begin May 15, 2026.⁹

Perdue’s Position

Perdue has denied the allegations throughout. In a December 2022 statement, SVP of Corporate Communications Andrea Staub said, “To be clear, we deny these allegations, and Perdue’s record of competitive wages and benefits speaks for itself.” The company said it settled “to avoid the expense of protracted litigation and put these claims behind us,” and announced it would create a Center of Business Ethics and Compliance with a new compliance officer reporting to the general counsel.¹⁰

The DOJ Case and Agri Stats Order

The Department of Justice filed its own civil antitrust suit on July 25, 2022, against three of the same poultry companies (Cargill, Sanderson Farms, and Wayne Farms) and WMS, alleging a 20-year conspiracy to share compensation data and suppress pay. Under proposed consent decrees, those three companies collectively agreed to pay $84.8 million in restitution to affected workers, the first time the Antitrust Division included restitution in a civil settlement of this type. They were also barred from sharing sensitive compensation data and placed under a court-appointed compliance monitor for ten years. WMS and its president, G. Jonathan Meng, were permanently banned from providing surveys that facilitate competitively sensitive data sharing in any industry.¹¹

A separate DOJ action targeted Agri Stats. A proposed Final Judgment filed May 15, 2026 in United States v. Agri Stats, Inc. (Case No. 23-cv-03009) would bar the company from sharing sales reports and most facility-level data between competing protein processors, require any shared information to be at least 45 days old, and require most data to be made available for public purchase. Agri Stats would also have to implement an antitrust compliance program and submit to a monitoring trustee.¹² The private plaintiffs also reached an injunctive settlement with Agri Stats that Judge Gallagher approved on March 10, 2026, ending the Jien litigation.¹³

Beef and Pork Wage-Fixing Case

Perdue is also a defendant in a parallel class action targeting the red meat industry. Brown v. JBS USA Food Company, et al. (Case No. 1:22-cv-02946), filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleges beef and pork processors used the same playbook: secret compensation surveys, annual meetings, direct executive communications, Agri Stats data exchanges, and no-poach agreements.¹⁴

Perdue’s $1.25 million settlement in that case received preliminary approval on February 27, 2024. It is part of a larger group of settlements totaling roughly $202.8 million, with Tyson at $72.5 million and JBS USA at $55 million as the biggest payors. The class covers anyone who worked at a defendant’s beef or pork processing plant in the United States between January 1, 2000, and February 27, 2024. A final approval hearing is set for November 13, 2026, and the case continues against Smithfield Foods.¹⁵

Child Labor Settlement at the Accomac Plant

In January 2025, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a settlement with Perdue over child labor violations at the company’s Accomac, Virginia poultry plant. A DOL investigation found that dating back to 2020, Perdue and its staffing contractor Staff Management Solutions (SMX) had jointly employed children in hazardous work such as deboning and processing chicken with electric knives and heat-sealing presses, and had allowed children to work past 7 p.m. on school nights. The company was also found to have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s “hot goods” provision by shipping products made with illegal child labor.¹⁶

Perdue paid $4 million in restitution, directed to affected children, advocacy groups, and anti-exploitation work, plus a $150,000 civil penalty. SMX paid a $125,000 civil penalty in a separate consent judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and was permanently barred from future child labor violations in the meat processing and packing industry.¹⁷ Both companies must implement compliance measures including a ban on hiring anyone under 18 at certain locations, mandatory child labor training, a tip line, and anti-retaliation protections.¹⁶ Bloomberg Law reported it was the DOL’s first child labor joint-employment case.¹⁸

Perdue’s Andrea Staub said the company “fully cooperated” with the investigation and that it “did not identify any current underage workers.” She added: “While we strongly disagreed with DOL’s findings of liability, and there are no admissions in the agreement to the contrary, Perdue recognized that a prolonged dispute with the Department of Labor did nothing to address the child labor crisis.”¹⁷

PFAS Contamination Suit in Maryland

Perdue is defending an active environmental case in federal court in Maryland. In January 2026, Judge Stephanie Gallagher denied key parts of Perdue’s motion to dismiss a suit brought by two residents living near the company’s Salisbury facility, Stephen Jones and Richard Renshaw. The plaintiffs allege Perdue has unlawfully discharged per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into Eastern Shore waterways, contaminating more than 100 area wells. The suit is brought under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and seeks an order forcing Perdue to stop the pollution and clean it up.¹⁹

Judge Gallagher allowed two counts alleging violations of the prohibition on open dumping to proceed and dismissed two others, one as duplicative and one for lack of standing. She rejected Perdue’s argument that the case should pause during an ongoing Maryland Department of the Environment investigation, and ruled that Perdue’s provision of bottled water and well-treatment systems did not moot the case, noting treatment systems may not address chemicals already absorbed into household pipes. A related proposed class action involving the same plaintiffs was allowed to move forward in 2025.¹⁹

Earlier Donning and Doffing Settlement

The current wave is not the first time Perdue has paid a large sum to processing plant workers. In 2002, the company settled Trotter v. Perdue Farms, Inc. (Case No. 99-893, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware) for $10 million. The case, brought on behalf of about 15,000 employees, alleged Perdue failed to pay workers for time spent putting on, taking off, and cleaning protective gear required by USDA regulations. A separate $10 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor over the same type of violations covered another 25,000 employees.²⁰²¹

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Cohen Milstein. Jien et al. v. Perdue Farms, Inc., et al.
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PR Newswire. Hagens Berman, Cohen Milstein Announce $398 Million in Settlements for Poultry Processing Workers
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Cohen Milstein. Cohen Milstein Announces $398.02 Million in Settlements for Poultry Processing Workers
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Cohen Milstein. Brown v. JBS USA Food Company, et al.
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U.S. Department of Labor. Perdue Farms DOL Settlement
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Reuters. Perdue Farms, Labor Department Ink $4 Million Deal in Child Labor Investigation
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Bloomberg Law. DOL Holds Perdue Farms Jointly Liable for Child Labor Violations
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The Daily Record. Federal Judge Allows PFAS Pollution Lawsuit Against Perdue Farms to Proceed
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Cohen Milstein. Trotter v. Perdue Farms, Inc.
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The Washington Post. Perdue Settles Suit for $10 Million