Contractor Fined Over Treatment of Workers
A Los Angeles-based labor contractor must pay nearly $300,000 in fines and back wages for allegedly deceiving and underpaying 88 Thai workers it sent to Hawaii to harvest onions and pineapples, the Labor Department said Monday.
Federal investigators also found that Global Horizons Inc. illegally deducted wages for housing and food, and may not have paid for the workers’ transportation.
The workers were brought into the United States on H-2A agricultural visas, which require employers to adhere to minimum rates of pay and to provide transportation, housing, meals and workers’ compensation insurance.
The workers were approved to work in Arizona, where pay rates are lower than in Hawaii. Some were illegally paid those lower rates in Hawaii, a Labor Department spokesman said.
Global Horizons President Mordechai Orian, who started the company 16 years ago in Israel and has plans to expand aggressively in California, said Monday that he had done nothing wrong but “decided to settle and move on.”
He blamed a farmer client in Hawaii for the underpayments, which date to 2003.
“We’ve got the department really aggressively working against us instead of spending their time on the thousands of people working with no documents and really getting abused,” Orian said.
As the visa sponsor, however, Orian is responsible for all the workers he imports.
Global Horizons has had problems with other regulators, including those in California and Washington state. In December, Washington officials revoked the company’s contractor’s license after years of complaints and fines.
California officials also have received dozens of complaints from Global Horizons workers, even though only a few hundred are now working in the state.
Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the state Department of Industrial Relations, said 27 wage claims are pending against the company, alleging that workers near Fresno were not paid for overtime and that payroll checks bounced. A hearing on the charges is set for later this week.
In light of the complaints and Washington’s action, the state is also considering license revocation, Fryer said. “We are reviewing their California farm labor license to see if we will take any action against them,” he said.
At peak season, the company provides about 3,000 workers to U.S. growers and other companies in 28 states, with the majority concentrated in Oregon, Georgia, Florida and Hawaii.
The company provides only a few hundred workers to citrus growers in California, the state that employs more agricultural workers than any other.
California farmers have long resisted using official visa programs to import workers because they have had a steady supply of undocumented workers. But as the border tightens and existing agricultural workers leave for more desirable jobs, growers are complaining of shortages and rethinking the visa program.
“We came here because we thought we’d have more business in California,” Orian said. “We still believe it will probably be the biggest market in the world.”
The company imports nearly all its workers from Thailand and Vietnam, not Mexico and Central America as is more typical. Orian said “that has put a target on our company politically.”
In March, Global Horizons signed a national labor agreement with the United Farm Workers, which had been a dogged critic of the firm in Washington. Under the pact, the company agreed to pay its workers 2% more than the rates mandated by federal rules.
Union spokesman Marc Grossman said Monday that he was unaware of the Labor Department action but expected the company to do better going forward.
“The UFW’s goal is to use the union contract to remedy the violations cited by the government,” Grossman said. “Our staff is out there monitoring the contract and making sure there’s compliance. If not, workers can use the grievance procedure.”
Grossman said the union, which is seeking to hire organizers who speak Thai and Vietnamese, had not received any grievances since the contract was signed two months ago.
