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, Juan planted sugarcane by hand seven days a week from sunup to sundown, rain or shine, in the blistering Louisiana heat. If he wanted a break or just a sip of water, he had to hide behind the sugarcane – away from his employers’ view – and hope that the drone buzzing overhead did not record his actions. Nearby, a sign brazenly announced, “Smile! You’re on camera.” In exchange for his hard labor, Juan, like thousands of other guest workers who come to the United States, was routinely cheated out of wages and forced into debt. His employers, who controlled his work visa from his native Mexico, virtually held him captive. If he complained, they retaliated by threatening to deport him or exclude him from other jobs. Juan’s story illustrates the systematic exploitation of guest workers who come to the United States for temporary jobs under the nation’s flawed and unfair H-2A worker program, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) documented in 2013. The SPLC recently filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of H-2A workers who, like Juan, have been employed by Arkansas-based Lowry Farms. The lawsuit alleges that Lowry – a large farm labor contractor that employs guest workers at sugarcane farms in Louisiana – breached its contract with the workers and violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). “I never imagined the work would be so difficult,” Juan – whose name has been changed in this story to protect his identity – recently told the SPLC. “It was a very tough, sad situation.” Not treated like a guest When Juan began working for Lowry in August 2018, he was optimistic. He had hoped to earn enough money under the guest worker program – $10.73 per hour, the minimum wage for H-2A workers in Louisiana at that time – to provide for his wife and children back home in Mexico. But he soon realized that he was not being treated at all like a “guest.” Instead, he was being manipulated and abused. Under federal laws, Lowry was expected to provide for the guest workers’ welfare by ensuring they had access to water and shade, paying them fair wages and protecting them against fraud and misrepresentation, among other safeguards. It failed on all counts. “Large and well-established H-2A employers like Lowry have been taking advantage of a visa program that does not protect workers and allows these employers to extract labor without paying the lawful and fair wages the workers were promised,” said SPLC Senior Staff Attorney Anne Janet Hernandez. ‘Working so hard for so little’ Before Juan left Mexico, Lowry told him that it would pay him by the hour. But, as it has done to so many of its other workers, Lowry failed to keep accurate time records for Juan and the other workers and sought to pay the workers “piece rate” – earnings based on the number of acres of sugarcane planted each day without recording the time worked each week. This resulted in Juan and the other workers being paid less than what was required by their H-2A work contracts and, at times, less than the FLSA minimum wage. “I was very sad,” Juan said. “The situation was stressful and depressing because of the lack of pay and thinking about how to provide for your family. Working so hard for so little was very upsetting. But our boss kept pushing us to work harder.” Over 800 H-2A laborers work for Lowry each year. Lowry representatives recruited the workers, who traveled from other cities in Mexico to Monterrey, near the U.S. border. Then they boarded a bus that took them directly to Louisiana. In order to pay for their work visas, hotels, food and transportation to Louisiana, many H-2A workers had to borrow money or take out loans before departing from Mexico in August 2018. Others had to pay fees to recruiters before their names would be placed on a list of potential H-2A workers, also known as a recruitment fee. In total, Juan spent more than $600 just to enter the United States. When his contract ended with Lowry in October 2018, he was more than $700 in debt. In solidarity, |
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