Migrant family seeks pay from A Wood County cucumber and tomato grower has been accused of paying substandard wages to a family of Texan migrant workers. A civil lawsuit alleging that Wenig Brothers Specialty Crops violated the federal Fair Labors Standard Act and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act has been filed in U.S. District Court in Toledo. Eleven members of the Villegas family, who traveled from Texas in the summer, 2005 to pick vegetables in the Wenig farm fields, have asked to be compensated for wages they say are due them. "We are trying to recover the wages the Villegas family were owed for work that they performed in the fields," said Mark Heller, an attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality Inc., a Toledo nonprofit law firm representing the family. The defendants, Gordon Wenig and his brother, Phil Wenig, grow tomatoes and pickling cucumbers as well as grain crops on 2,000 acres in Middleton Township, north of Bowling Green. When contacted yesterday, Phil Wenig didn't want to comment about the allegations. The Wenigs are also accused in the lawsuit of failing to provide portable toilets and drinking water for migrant workers in the field, as required by federal law. The lawsuit, which was assigned to Judge Jack Zouhary, said the family members were paid less than $5.15 per hour, the federally mandated minimum wage at that time. The affected family includes Jose and Marcia Villegas, their four children, and three minor grandchildren. Mr. Heller said the Wenigs didn't keep individualized production records and itemized wage records in the harvesting of cucumbers, but instead paid some of the family members for their collective work in the fields. Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, said the Wenig farms were not among employers with labor agreements covering migrant workers, so disputes have to be settled in court. |