The California Labor Commissioner’s Office reached a $1.5 million settlement involving violations committed by five Los Angeles-area poultry processors who underpaid more than 300 workers, according to a release by the department.
The office filed the case against The Exclusive Poultry Inc., J.T. Foods Specialty Inc., and D8 Poultry LLC in 2021. The case also involved Tony Bran, who owns the three client employer companies, which are businesses that obtain labor from a labor contractor.
The poultry processors who directly employed the workers were Sullon Poultry Inc. and Camacho Poultry LLC, both in La Puente, Calif., and D-8 Foods Inc., Best Poultry Inc. and M.G Poultry Inc., all in East Los Angeles.
Court documents show that Bran paid workers by the piece to debone chicken legs and were not provided paid rest breaks as required by law, were not paid properly for overtime, and were not compensated for time required to wait for shipments of chicken to arrive and for deboned chicken to be removed from their work area. Some workers also made less than the minimum wage. In addition, the poultry processors failed to maintain workers’ compensation coverage.
The investigation began after a worker filed a complaint alleging wage violations in the summer of 2017. The investigation found that the poultry processors paid workers a flat rate of $2.35 per 40-pound box of deboned chicken and failed to pay for nonproductive time or overtime. Bran and his companies leased the processing facilities, supplied the chicken to be deboned, and sold the deboned chicken to their customers.
The Labor Commissioner’s Office has already received the settlement amount and is in the process of locating affected workers to pay them the money they are owed.
