Beef Producers Conspire To Artificially Depress Employee Wages And Benefits Featured
Emerson Firm is investigating whether the nation’s largest beef packers and processors conspired to depress and to fix the compensation and benefits paid to non-supervisory production and maintenance employees working in beef processing plants in certain states.
Beef processing and packers play a vital role in the nations meat supply chain. Industry employees endure physically demanding and often dangerous working conditions in their efforts to provide for their families. Is so doing they make food available to families nationwide.
Like all workers, beef processing and packer employees deserve the benefits of free market competition for their labor, including wages and benefits that are set through a competitive process that is free from anticompetitive coordination between employers.
There is evidence, however, that dominant market players in the industry collaborated on and assisted each other with compensation decisions. As a result they artificially suppress compensation and benefits in labor markets in which they compete for workers. In so doing deprive a generation of workers of fair pay and benefits.
Background
The Potential Defendant Processors listed below control approximately 70% of the market for grain-fattened cattle that is processed into various cuts of meat for consumers.
Throughout Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado tens of thousands of people are employed by these companies in processing and packing plants that include slaughterhouse facilities and further processing facilities.
During conferences and other industry events, executives from the Potential Defendant Processors may have had opportunities to exchange competitively sensitive information about current and prospective employee compensation and benefits or whether their executives used industry indices to further facilitate and/or police any unlawful agreements on employee compensation.
Potential Defendant Processors
- Cargill, Inc.
- JBS USA
- National Beef Packing Co., LLC
- Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc.
- Agri Stats, Inc.
- CattleFax
- Express Markets, Inc.
- Urner Barry
- WMS and Company Inc.
If you know any individual employed by any of the above Potential Defendant Processors as a non-supervisory production or non-supervisory maintenance worker in a beef processing or packing plant in Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, or Colorado, we are interested in speaking with you and/or your contacts.