NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN March 6, 2006
Suit filed on behalf of migrants The lawsuit, filed five weeks ago in federal court in Columbia on behalf of three Mexican laborers, is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the South and Northwest on behalf of migrant workers in the forestry industry, which activists claim is rife with worker abuse. A U.S. Senate subcommittee has been holding hearings to determine whether changes need to be made to the federal law that allows U.S. employers to import low-skilled workers to handle backbreaking labor no one else seems to want. The latest Poverty Law Center suit seeks to become a class-action case for an estimated 1,500 migrant temporary workers that Superior Forestry Service Inc. of Tilly, Ark., has employed over the past six years. It seeks back pay, travel expenses, other monetary damages and an injunction prohibiting the company from violating U.S. wage and working condition laws. Superior Forestry officials referred calls seeking comment to attorney Larry Stine in Atlanta, who could not be reached. The company has until today to respond to the lawsuit in court. The lawsuit sheds some light on a little-known federal guest worker program that has been growing in popularity the past few years. The H-2B program allows companies to bring in foreign workers to perform jobs a company hasn't been able to fill locally. It is one of several nonimmigrant labor programs available for businesses. The number of applications from Tennessee companies seeking workers through the program rose from 437 in 1999, before Congress streamlined the application system, to 1,036 in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. It wasn't immediately clear how many visas were awarded for work in the state. The H-2B program is for low-skilled, nonagricultural jobs. Employers must certify that they have tried to fill the jobs locally. Companies must agree to pay the prevailing wage for their area and industry. They also must provide workers with a place to live. If a worker stays for the whole term of the contract — usually less than a year — the company must pay travel costs home. Caudill Mowing of La Vergne was among two-dozen or so landscaping companies in Tennessee to have applied for visas under the program in recent years. It sought 20 workers at $7.15 an hour but didn't get approval to fill the jobs. "We never were able to get any of the visas," said Terry Caudill, one of the commercial landscaping company's owners. "They ran out before we could actually get any." Caudill, which isn't involved in the lawsuit, employs 16 or 17 people at peak season and has had to turn down some clients because it couldn't always fill jobs at the wages it was offering. "We could have done more work, but we didn't do it because we couldn't find enough workers," Caudill said. "I tried two years in a row (to participate in H-2B), and I haven't tried since." The Superior Forestry lawsuit is one of several H-2B visa-related cases being handled by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the forestry industry in the South and Northwest. Mary Bauer, lead attorney for the center's case here, said she couldn't comment because of local court rules. The suit alleges that the Tilly, Ark., company didn't pay minimum wage, let alone the prevailing wage the Labor Department requires. Workers weren't paid overtime for working more than 40 hours a week, weren't given an accurate accounting of their time and pay and weren't paid in a timely manner, the suit claims. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge William Haynes. No trial date has been set.
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