Workers’ Rights Archives

April 29, 2024 In Cases

Bathroom Breaks for Delivery Drivers (Cross v. Amazon)

Amazon is one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world—yet its policies deprive its delivery drivers of basic labor rights, including the right to bathroom breaks. Under Amazon’s brutal work quotas and elaborate surveillance systems, many drivers resort to urinating in bottles...

May 18, 2023 In Cases

Proposition 12

FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice) submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of California’s Proposition 12, which limits the sale of pork products in California produced using extreme confinement. The Supreme Court of the United States sided with the...

January 17, 2023 In Cases

Essential Services for Colorado’s Farmworkers

Everyone should be able to work with dignity and access resources that better their working conditions and lives. However, Colorado farmworkers’ right to access essential services where they work and live is under threat. Agricultural workers tend to be isolated and work long hours. Many live...

November 3, 2021 In Cases

Workers’ Compensation for Michigan’s Undocumented Workers

Everyone should be able to work in conditions that are dignified, fair, and healthy, and getting injured at work should never mean losing your income or ability to take care of your family. However, for the past 17 years undocumented workers in Michigan who suffer serious...

October 27, 2021 In Cases

Ag-Gag Litigation

A just, healthy, and thriving food system requires transparency. Public Justice engages in litigation to strike down the Ag-Gag laws that penalize whistleblowers who expose the truth about the factory farm system....

June 21, 2021 In Cases

Food & Water Watch v. Smithfield Foods

Food & Water Watch, represented by FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice), filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against Smithfield Foods, alleging that the multinational meat processing company repeatedly lied to consumers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic so...

April 14, 2021 In Cases

Buljic v. Tyson Foods, Inc.

FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice) filed an amicus brief in support of meatpacking workers who died from contracting COVID-19 at a Tyson slaughterhouse in Waterloo, Iowa (Buljic v. Tyson Foods, Inc. and Fernandez v. Tyson Foods, Inc.). The two wrongful death lawsuits were filed...

November 30, 2020 In Cases

Maid-Rite (Justice at Work v. Sec. of Labor)

FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice), Public Justice, Towards Justice, Nichols Kaster, and Justice at Work filed a lawsuit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania using a never-before-tested mechanism in the Occupational Safety and Health Act, seeking to compel OSHA to enforce workplace...

July 8, 2020 In Cases

Food Chain Workers Alliance v. Tyson Foods Title VI Complaint

A nationwide coalition of organizations that advocate for meat processing workers and allied groups filed an administrative civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging that in addition to being disastrous for the wellbeing of workers and for public health, two major meat...

April 24, 2020 In Cases

Rural Community Workers Alliance & Jane Doe v. Smithfield

With food chain workers deemed “essential” for the wellbeing of others at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but expected to continue working through their own illness, workers at Smithfield’s pork processing plant in Milan, Missouri took legal action to secure basic protective equipment and protocol...

Cases