Feds pass out paychecks to blueberry workers

A handful of local farm workers received more than $6,000 in back wages and damages Monday.

The checks come four months after the U.S. Secretary of Labor settled a long-running legal dispute with Washington blueberry growers, including Walla Walla’s Blue Mountain Farms LLC.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Labor passed out the checks to a few of the 1,000-plus blueberry workers covered by a settlement covering the 2011, 2012 and 2013 harvest. The Monday evening visit to Kennewick highlighted its work to enforce wage laws in Washington agriculture, officials said.

“Today is an opportunity to meet with some of the local workers and to hear their stories,” said Jeanette Aranda, district director for the Department of Labor.

For one Kennewick family, picking blueberries means sub-minimum wages, said Serafin Sanchez Cortes. He picked blueberries with his wife, Emma, and their four children. A foreman insisted on assigning multiple workers to the same Social Security number. The entire family was assigned to the same work ticket. The piecemeal rate worked out to less than minimum wage.

Sanchez, speaking through a translator, said the money is very important. But having the value of their work was even more so.

In a 65-page consent judgment that ended the case in January, the defendants acknowledged violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Migrant Seasonal Worker Protection Act and denying investigators access to workers.

The judgment required growers to pay $385,318 in back pay and liquidated damages. Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson awarded $20,000 in civil monetary penalties to the federal government

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez sued Blue Mountain and the other defendants in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington in 2013 alleging their pay practices violated federal wage laws. Aranda said investigations typically are triggered by complaints from workers, former workers or even competitors.

It did not disclose what triggered the investigation into Blue Mountain and its co-defendants.

Blue Mountain barred federal officials from visiting the fields where its workers were picking berries. A court order forced Blue Mountain to give federal investigators access to workers and to stop interfering with the investigation.

With the case settled, the defendants have paid the entire sum to the government. No appeal is expected.

“We have all the money,” Aranda said.

The department is cutting checks for amounts ranging from a few dollars to several thousand dollars to the known workers. The government is working to locate unidentified workers as well. Workers can contact the labor department at 206-398-8039.

“Regardless of immigration status, we protect all workers,” Aranda said.

According to the consent judgment, the growers acknowledged they tracked the work of groups of pickers in a single ticket without maintaining records for the hours worked or wages paid to individual group members. As a result, the growers were unable to prove if some employees received Washington’s minimum wage for their work, which was $7.25 at the time.

The defendants also acknowledged that packing shed workers did not receive federally-manadated overtime when they packed berries from other farms. Those employees were paid straight time for the hours they worked over a 40-hour workweek, according to court documents.

The consent judgment included an injunction against future wage law violations and a requirement that the defendants post a notice of employee rights in both English and Spanish at work sites.

This story was originally published May 23, 2016 at 6:43 PM with the headline "Feds pass out paychecks to blueberry workers."