Beef & Pork Plant Workers $202.8M Wage-Fixing Settlement

Who Is Eligible?

You may be eligible to file a claim if you:

• The court's test has three parts. You worked at a defendant's beef or pork processing plant, in the United States, at some point between 1 January 2000 and 27 February 2024. Partial service counts — nobody needs to have been there for the whole period.
• There is a main Class and a smaller Subclass, and the difference is money. Everyone in the window above shares the nine settlements worth $191.55 million. If any of your work fell between 1 January 2014 and 27 February 2024 you are also in the Subclass, which shares $11.25 million more from two further defendants. Leave in 2013 and you draw on the first pot only.
• Sixteen employers appear on the official plant list, covering 160 sites in 34 states: Agri Beef, American Foods Group, Cargill, Greater Omaha, Hormel, Indiana Packers, JBS, National Beef, Nebraska Beef, Perdue, Quality Pork, Seaboard, Smithfield, Triumph Foods, Tyson and Washington Beef. Many trade under other names on the ground, so check the plant rather than the parent.
• Smithfield workers are included even though Smithfield has not settled. The case against it continues, yet the notice is explicit that you are paid from the settlements reached by the others even if your own employer is not one of them. Smithfield is the largest employer on the list at 40 plants.
• Whether you got a letter is not the test. Records drive who was mailed, and records have gaps. If no notice arrived you can still look yourself up in the administrator's records, and failing that check whether your plant is on the list.
• The administrator can ask you for documents. If it does and you do not send them, you can be shut out of the settlements, so treat a request as the last step rather than an optional one.
• This is not the grocery-bill case. The consumer beef and pork price-fixing settlements are separate matters with their own classes, and the consumer beef ones have already closed. Buying the product does not put you in this Class.

How Much Can You Get?

The eleven paying defendants put up $202.8 million between them, and the notice itemises every cheque: Tyson $72.5m, JBS $55m, Cargill $29.75m, National Beef $14.2m, Hormel and its affiliates $13.5m, Seaboard $10m, American Foods Group $4m, Agri Beef and Washington Beef $1.4m, Perdue $1.25m, Indiana Packers $1.1m, Greater Omaha $100,000. Three more defendants settled without paying anything and gave cooperation instead.

A large slice never reaches the class. Class counsel may take up to 33.33%, which the notice puts at $67,593,240, plus interest. Lawsuit costs run to $6 million, notice and administration to $4 million, and each of the three class representatives may receive $30,000. That is roughly $77.7 million, so something in the region of $125 million is left to divide.

Your share depends on four things, and only one of them is in your control. How many people are in the Class and Subclass. How long you worked at a defendant's plant. How much you earned there. And what the court approves in fees and costs.

Earnings are the reason to log in. Because pay history feeds the calculation, the administrator asks even people who will be paid automatically to check and correct the contact, employment and earnings details it holds. Nobody else will catch an understated wage record for you.

No per-person figure has been published and the notice says plainly that it is not yet known what anyone will get. With a class spanning 24 years and 160 plants, treat any specific dollar amount you see quoted elsewhere as invention.

Expect tax to come out. The notice treats these payments as wages: payroll taxes are withheld by the administrator and the payment may be reported on an IRS Form W-2. That is unusual for a settlement and it means the figure you are told is not the figure that lands.

Payment waits for the end of the road. Money moves after the court approves the settlements and any appeals are finished.

How to File Your Claim

File with the administrator:

• Work out which of the two situations you are in. A postcard or email notice means the records already have you. No notice means you need to ask to take part.
• If a notice reached you, log in at BeefPorkWages.com and check your earnings. You do not have to do this to be paid, but your share is worked out from your pay history, so an incomplete record costs you money quietly.
• If no notice reached you, search the records first on the same site. If your name is not there, check whether your plant is on the covered list before assuming you are out.
• Then file a participation form by 26 March 2027. Online or by post, and a posted form has to be postmarked by that date. Ring 1-877-411-4775 if you would rather they sent you a paper one.
• Use the deadline printed on the newest notice, not an older one. The dates moved when two more companies settled, and the administrator asks people to disregard deadlines on any earlier notice they were sent.
• Decide about opting out before 29 September 2026. Opting out is the only route that keeps your own right to sue these companies, and it costs you every penny of the settlements. Objecting is different: you stay in, you still get paid, and you tell the court what you dislike. Same date for both.
• Keep whatever employment records you have to hand. The administrator can ask for documents, and not producing them can cost you your place in the settlements.
• Free help exists in your language. The settlement site translates into roughly 250 languages, the notices were written at a fourth-grade reading level on the court's direction, and A.B. Data answers questions on 1-877-411-4775 or at info@beefporkwages.com.

Frequently Asked Questions