Settlement reached on pension payments for 1940s-era Mexican workers in U.S.

By Garance Burke

ASSOCIATED PRESS
2:00 a.m. February 7, 2009

FRESNO — After years of political pressure and legal wrangling, a court settlement reached yesterday allows Mexican laborers brought in to stem World War II-era labor shortages to collect on pension funds they earned decades ago.

The class-action suit brought on behalf of the workers was settled in a federal court in San Francisco. It will allow thousands of graying former guest workers who manned U.S. farms and rail yards to collect earnings withheld from their paychecks and sent to Mexican banks under an agreement between both countries.

Gonzalo Trejo, 76, a grandfather in Irving, Tex., said he hoped the money he made as a young man thinning sugar beets in Colorado would help him grow old a little more comfortably.

“We went back to Mexico when they kicked us out of this country, but we never knew what happened to the money,â€