Justice Department probes whether chicken processors shared plant-worker pay data in order to keep wages low

"The Justice Department is investigating whether poultry companies have engaged in anticompetitive sharing about employment practices that held down plant workers’ wages, according to people familiar with the matter," Patrick Thomas and Brent Kendall report for The Wall Street Journal. Justice "is examining actions at several poultry companies, the people said, and adds to the scrutiny that U.S. meat processors are facing from the government and their workers. The department has put at least some companies on legal notice that they must preserve documents, several of these people said."

Major poultry processors Pilgrim's Pride and Perdue Farms confirmed they had received such notices; other processors such as Tyson Foods, George's and Sanderson Farms declined to comment. The Justice Department also kept mum.

Lawsuits from poultry-plant workers have alleged that their employers—which control more than 90% of poultry sold in the U.S.—shared data on wages for more than 20 years to keep worker pay down.

"The Justice Department has been broadly looking into alleged antitrust issues in the U.S. meat industry for several years, ranging from charging chicken executives with price fixing to examining meatpackers’ activities in the beef market," the Journal reports. "The Biden administration has alleged that the U.S. meat industry uses its scale to inflate Americans’ food bills, and farm groups have accused meat companies of using their market power to keep livestock prices artificially low." Processors have blamed rising prices on disruptions such as factory fires, pandemic shut-downs, and labor shortages.

In a separate but related case, 10 former poultry executives are being tried in federal court for sharing with each other what prices they charged major restaurant buyers, allegedly in order to keep prices high, the Journal reports. The defendants have all pled not guilty, saying that it's not illegal to share such information, and that there's no proof of a broad conspiracy.