Migrant workers got fatter paychecks than others — now NC farm must pay up, judge says
At 14,000 acres, Scott Farms Inc. in North Carolina touts itself as one of the largest farms in the region, according to its website.
But its farm workers have been underpaid for years, the N.C. Justice Center said.
Now Scott Farms owes $600,000 to year-round employees under a settlement approvedby U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan on Friday. The farm will pay an additional $175,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs.
“Many of these workers were, and continue to be, Scott Farms employees,” Carol Brooke, senior attorney at the Justice Center, said in a statement. “Their willingness to fight for their right to equal pay and overtime has benefited hundreds of farm workers.”
Scott Farms predominantly grows sweet potatoes and tobacco in eastern North Carolina’s Wilson County. A representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
The settlement, which is not an admission of wrongdoing by Scott Farms, is divided into two classes of year-round domestic workers who the Justice Center said were paid less than migrant workers with H-2A visas. The workers were also denied overtime pay.
They worked packing sweet potatoes or in the fields, Brooke told McClatchy News.
A few years ago, she said Scott Farms started using temporary workers from Mexico under the federal government’s H-2A visa program, which permits U.S employers to hire foreign nationals to fill seasonal agricultural jobs.
Federal regulations dictate how much those workers are paid, which is “significantly higher than minimum wage,” Brooke said.
The H-2A workers and year-round domestic workers were performing the same jobs — known as “corresponding employment,” Justin Flores, vice president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, told McClatchy News.
By law, that means they should have been paid the same so as not to “adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers,” the Justice Center said in a news release announcing the settlement.
Instead, Flores said Scott Farms paid only its workers with H-2A visas the higher rate — leaving domestic workers several dollars short.
He said that’s not uncommon in the agriculture industry.
“The reality is most of those folks have mixed immigration status,” he said. “The image that might come to mind is a U.S.-born white guy. In reality it’s mostly other immigrant workers who are not U.S. workers.”
Without the protection of a federal visa program and knowledge of labor laws, Flores said many of them end up shorted.
The class action complaint — first filed by the Justice Center in 2017 — also accused Scott Farms of failing to pay overtime to its workers in the packing house.
Most farm workers aren’t entitled to overtime pay except when they’re packing produce from outside farms, which Brooke said was the case here.
Roughly 350 workers could benefit from the settlement agreement, Flores said.
Under the terms of the deal, anyone employed by Scott Farms from Sept. 15, 2014 to Aug. 14, 2019 is eligible. The nine named plaintiffs will receive $14,000 to be split among them, Brooke said.
It’s not the first settlement Scott Farms has paid.
In 2015, court documents show the sweet potato and tobacco farm agreed to pay workers $1.25 million after the Justice Center accused it of failing to pay domestic workers minimum wage and overtime.
“They kind of continued to do the same thing,” Flores said.
The recent settlement agreement requires Scott Farms to pay local workers employed alongside H-2A workers the same higher wage rate for at least three years, court documents show.
