The first poultry company that they grew chickens for (also called their “integrator”) requested unexpected capital investments to update chicken houses they had previously been told were good to go. The Diazes’ story isn’t unique for the chicken industry. But almost immediately they realized the reality of the chicken business was very different than poultry companies’ promises. Michael kept his teaching job, and between Jean-Nichole, their four sons, and their parents, the Diazes were fully invested in making the farm sustain itself. They were told that raising chickens part-time on contract would help pay off their farm. “There was our little paradise that we thought we would be able to sustain and work and make it last for generations,” Mr. THE DIAZES WERE BOTH schoolteachers when they bought 50 acres of land with a family home and four chicken houses on it in 2018 for $1.5 million (roughly $1.2 million of which went toward the land and the chicken barn). Diaz employees with standard benefits, or allow farmers to stay independent and make their own business decisions.Īmick Farms did not respond to a request for comment. If that effort succeeds, large grower middlemen would have a choice to make: make workers like Mr. Late last year, the National Labor Relations Board announced that it would seek to expand the definition of “employee,” and potentially cite employers who misclassified workers as violating federal labor law, which would force companies to properly identify and compensate workers. Corporations from Tyson to Amazon to port trucking firms have exploited changes in antitrust laws to push the riskier or labor-intensive parts of their supply chain onto “ puppet entrepreneurs,” who take on all the risks of being a small business without meaningful independence. “It took our whole savings, and it took every dollar and cent that we brought in outside … had this day-to-day control over our farm, there was nothing that we could do to do anything different.”īy arguing that contract poultry growers are illegally misclassified as independent contractors, the case highlights the ways corporations increasingly seek “control without responsibility” in the food industry and beyond. “It wasn’t very long before we realized that this is not a business model that’s going to be proven by the fruit of our efforts,” says Michael Diaz. Diaz allege that they were promised independence, but practically and legally were underpaid, unprotected chicken company employees, with little control over their operations and $1.5 million in debt on the line. Now they’re hoping other contract poultry farmers will join their class action lawsuit, filed Monday, against one of the poultry corporations they worked with, Amick Farms. They ended up losing their life savings to get out of a dead-end chicken-growing contract. Michael and Jean-Nichole Diaz wanted a farm business to pass down to their four sons. A farmer checks on the gravity feed bin in his chicken barn during a cold spell in January.