Field Laborers Accuse Farm Company of Shootings, Beatings, Threats

Juan Bahena Solano said he was working tomato fields near Del Mar last August when a man fired six times at him with a pellet gun. Bahena alleges that the man, Joe T. Ukegawa, reloaded the pellet gun and took six more shots at him.

Though in pain, Bahena said, he turned and smiled at Ukegawa, who was also his boss.

“I wanted him to know that I had courage, that I wasn’t afraid,” said Bahena, a 28-year-old farm worker from Mexico who wore jeans and a brown cowboy hat as he recounted the alleged incident recently at his attorney’s office here.

In court papers, Bahena alleges that Ukegawa shot him with the pellet gun “for no apparent reason.” His attorney and other farm workers allege that Joe T. Ukegawa--called el loco, or “the crazy one” by farm workers--routinely shot the pellet gun at Bahena and other farm workers, apparently for sport.

Among 40 Suing

Bahena is among 40 current and former employees of Ukegawa Brothers Inc., a major Carlsbad-based farming concern, who filed a civil suit in Superior Court in Vista last week against the firm and several Ukegawa officials. (Joe T. Ukegawa, one of the defendants, is the son of the one of the brothers who founded the farming operation.)

The workers, who are seeking $89 million in punitive damages plus undetermined amounts for general damages and other costs, accuse Ukegawa officials of shooting, beating and threatening farm laborers, most of them illegal aliens from Mexico who said they lived in the fields near land farmed by Ukegawa. In addition, 20 former Ukegawa workers have filed or plan to file criminal complaints against Ukegawa officials with police departments in San Diego and Carlsbad, according to Jan E. Culbertson and Oscar Ruiz de Chavez, two attorneys who are representing the workers.

Besides the assault allegations, the workers charge that company officials attempted to coerce workers to sign releases of all claims for back wages against Ukegawa Brothers. Until the workers signed such releases, the lawsuit charges, the growers withheld documents that would assist workers in their applications for legalization, or amnesty, under the new immigration law. All of the workers are current or former illegal aliens.

Because many ex-Ukegawa workers have received temporary legal status under the new law, their attorneys say, they are now willing to air their complaints of abuse.

Latest Saga

The charges against Ukegawa, part of a broad-based legal attack against the firm, are the latest saga in the farming concern’s checkered history of employer-worker relations.

Peter Mackauf, general manager for Ukegawa Brothers, said that the firm was not yet prepared to comment publicly on the allegations. Nor would Mackauf provide any details about the firm’s farming operations, although Ukegawa is known to employ hundreds of farm laborers who work mostly leased farmland at various sites from near Del Mar to Carlsbad.

William N. Sauer Jr., a Carlsbad attorney representing the firm, also declined to comment on the specific allegations in the lawsuit, but Sauer spoke highly of the Ukegawa family, which runs the firm.

He noted that Hiroshi and Joe Ukegawa, Japanese-Americans who founded the operation, were themselves victims of injustice--they were interned by U.S. authorities during World War II. He said the firm would not mistreat workers.

Shocked by Allegations

“I have known them since 1969, and I have always found them to be very caring individuals,” said Sauer. “These individuals suffered so much abuse . . . . That’s why I’m so shocked by the allegations. I find them to be incredible.”

Nonetheless, Ukegawa Brothers is no stranger to controversy. Besides the civil suit and the criminal allegations, Ukegawa Brothers faces a number of other labor-related legal challenges:

- The 40 workers named in the civil suit are among 73 former and current Ukegawa laborers who have already filed or plan to file back-pay claims against Ukegawa totaling about $1.5 million, according to their attorneys. The claims are being filed with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Culbertson said. In 1984, Ukegawa Brothers agreed to pay $125,000 to settle a suit brought by California authorities who alleged that some 2,000 workers were underpaid during 1980.

- The U.S. Department of Labor and Ukegawa are currently attempting to negotiate a settlement of a year-old government civil suit alleging that the company paid workers less than the legal minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. U.S. authorities are seeking payment of unspecified back wages.

- In a dispute that dates back in part to 1975, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board is seeking a court order directing Ukegawa to abide by the terms of two board orders issued in 1983. The board found that that the company committed a number of unfair labor practices--including threatening employees and denying access to union officials--during unsuccessful organization efforts by the United Farm Workers, according to Stephanie Bullock, assistant general counsel with the board’s regional office in El Centro.

Among other things, Bullock said, the company has been ordered to offer jobs back to 39 employees who were allegedly dismissed wrongly and to pay those workers back wages.

Referred to as Devils

Court documents and interviews with farm workers indicate that Ukegawa Brothers, routinely referred to by the workers as los diablos, or the devils, or demons, have long utilized the labor of farm workers who lived in nearby fields. In 1980, Scott Washburn, then a volunteer for the United Farm Workers, described workers’ conditions in a statement on file in Superior Court in San Diego.

“We discovered working and living conditions which amount to pure slavery, if not worse,” Washburn wrote. “The workers live in caves dug into the hill, shacks they manage to build with plastic or cartons or under a bush or tree if no place else. Because of fear from the Border Patrol, they live well into the hills in the areas where there is heavy brush. It may take them 30 minutes to an hour to walk to work each morning.”

Laborers who have worked with Ukegawa Brothers more recently say that farm workers there still live in nearby fields. In the lawsuit, 18 former Ukegawa workers charge that they have been beaten, threatened or shot at by Ukegawa officials.

Support for Workers

Felix Aguilar Rodriguez, 35, who says he worked as a truck driver for Ukegawa Brothers for five years until quitting last month, said in court papers that Joe T. Ukegawa threatened his life and the lives of his family members on June 24. In an interview, Aguilar said the alleged threats were prompted by his support of the decision of some workers to speak to the attorneys regarding their complaints about the Ukegawa farming operation.

Aguilar said that, as a truck driver, he was better paid than most employees and was also a legal U.S. resident. He said he often witnessed beatings of other field workers.

Juan Bahena Solano, who was undocumented until recently qualifying for temporary legal residence under the amnesty section of the new law, said he and other farm workers lived in the fields near Del Mar for most of the time while he worked for Ukegawa Brothers between 1979 and 1987.

Bahena, a native of the Mexican interior state of Guerrero, said he built a hole where he slept and kept his belongings. Now he shares a place with other farm workers in Oceanside.

“We lived like moles,” said Bahena.