The EEOC can pursue claims that two Washington state fruit growers discriminated against guest workers from Thailand by denying them adequate housing, food, transportation, and pay, a federal appeals court ruled Feb. 6.
Green Acres Farms Inc. and Valley Fruit Orchards LLC may be liable as “joint employers” with the employment agency they hired to recruit the workers under the U.S. government’s H-2A agricultural guestworker program, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said.
Use of labor contractors to recruit H-2A workers is common in agriculture, but the contractors themselves often lack the financial means to pay workers ...