Perdue Farms Settles Overtime Lawsuit

IMMIGRANTS & EMPLOYMENT

Immigrants' Employment Rights and Remedies

PERDUE FARMS SETTLES OVERTIME LAWSUIT
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 15, No. 4, June 29, 2001

After three years of litigation, over 100 chicken catchers in Maryland will receive the overtime wages long owed them by Perdue Farms, Inc. As part of the agreement that settles the chicken catchers' lawsuit against Perdue, the company agreed to pay the workers double their estimated overtime wages. The settlement agreement also resolves claims brought by two individual part-time workers that Perdue fired them in retaliation for their joining the lawsuit against the company.

The complaint, Heath, et al. v. Perdue Farms, Inc., was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in September 1998. The plaintiffs sued to recover overtime wages they claimed Perdue owed them, and they sought other statutory damages available under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) and Maryland wage law. The plaintiffs alleged that an average nine-member crew of chicken catchers caught between 30,000 and 50,000 chickens each shift and regularly worked approximately twelve hours per shift for at least a five-day week, yet they never received any overtime pay for the hours worked over forty hours per week.

Perdue argued that it was neither the sole nor "joint" employer of the chicken catchers and that the plaintiffs were instead employees of the independent contractor crew leaders who recruited them. Perdue also argued that the plaintiffs are "agricultural laborers" and that, since the overtime provisions of the FLSA do not apply to such workers, the plaintiffs were not entitled to overtime pay.

In February 2000, the federal court ruled against Perdue, finding that the chicken catchers were indeed its employees. Moreover, the court gave deference to the position of the U.S. Dept. of Labor, which has consistently, since at least the early 1980s, taken the position that "live-haul" workers in the poultry industry are not agricultural workers and are entitled, under the FLSA, to overtime pay. The court found Perdue was in "willful" violation of the FLSA because it "either knew or showed reckless disregard for the matter of whether its conduct was prohibited by the statute."

As part of the settlement agreement, Perdue also recognized the chicken catchers as its "employees," which also gives them an opportunity to participate in the company's health and retirement plans, in addition to providing them with broader protection under state and federal employment and labor laws.