Fl.: Grower sued by "migrant workers"
Grower sued by migrant workers
Suit claims pay less than minimum wage
By Pat Gillespie
pgillespie@news-press.com
Originally posted on January 31, 2007
Nearly 200 migrant workers have filed a federal lawsuit against a produce company that grows tomatoes in Immokalee for paying them, they say, less than minimum wage.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Fort Myers, was filed on behalf of more than 3,000 people comprising indigent migrant workers who live in Mexico and who worked for Ag-Mart Produce Inc. during the 2005-06 tomato season.
Ag-Mart, which does business as Santa Sweets Inc., grows grape tomatoes in North Carolina, New Jersey and Florida, including Immokalee. The company is based in Plant City. The group’s attorney, Gregory Schell, said all 177 workers named in the lawsuit worked in Immokalee.
“They didn’t pay minimum wage,” Schell said. “They doctored the books to hide it.”
Schell alleges the company owes the plaintiffs more than $250,000 in lost wages and, if certified as a class-action suit to include 3,000 workers, the company could end up paying more than $2 million if it loses.
The lawsuit alleges that crew leaders underreported workers’ hours from June 1, 2005, to July 31, 2006. For instance, Schell said, workers would give their electronic time card to their crew leaders, who would clock them in, but then the hours would be altered before workers were paid. Because tomatoes can’t be picked while they’re wet with dew, Schell said, workers would have to wait sometimes hours before picking the crops. They also would do other tasks, including irrigation, planting, laying plastic and picking tomatoes.
Schell, of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, said he has been involved in several lawsuits between workers and Ag-Mart Produce over wage issues in the past, so workers suing the company isn’t rare.
Half of the group is from the same area in Mexico, so the word is spreading that if they aren’t paid, they can sue, Schell said. They understand retribution is possible and most are willing to lose their jobs, he added.
“They’re willing to take the risk,” Schell said. “If they lost it, it’s not the end of the world. They’re basically asking, ‘Please pay us for the time we worked.’”
David Stefany, Ag-Mart’s attorney, said Tuesday he hadn’t yet seen the lawsuit, so he couldn’t provide comment.
Ag-Mart was sued in March by an Immokalee couple that claimed the company was negligent in spraying its fields with pesticides, causing their son to be born without limbs and with spinal and lung deformities. That lawsuit, filed in the 13th judicial circuit in Tampa, is still open.
Schell filed suit against the company in late 2005 in Jacksonville because Ag-Mart allegedly provided poor housing conditions in Hamilton County.
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