Farm workers with visas sue over conditions

By Susan Ferrisss

Two dozen farm workers who came to the United States on agricultural guest worker visas have filed a lawsuit against Galt-based Salvador Gonzalez Farm Labor Contractor, claiming the contracting company has cheated them out of wages, offers them less work than they were promised and is housing them in filthy conditions.

Most of the workers named in the suit live in a bunk house five miles outside the small Yolo County town of Clarksburg. They are represented by the California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, which filed the suit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento.

The suit accuses the company of breach of contract and violations of state and federal law.

The workers are among 181 people from from the Mexican state, Colima, who came to the Sacramento area on H-2A agricultural guest worker visas in mid-July to harvest and tend pears, grapes and other crops for Salvador Gonzalez Farm Labor Contractor.

Julian Gonzalez, who along with his son Salvador Gonzalez, is named in the suit, said neither of the men has seen a copy of it.

"None of this is true," Julian Gonzalez said of the workers' claims. He declining to comment further.

Since arriving in mid-July, 24-year-old worker Fray Marcelino Lopez said, he and others have worked only sporadically, and don't know from day to day if they will work a few hours or not at all. He said the workers fronted more than $600 in fees to pay for the processing of U.S. work visas in Mexico and for bus transportation and other traveling costs to get from Colima to the Sacramento area.

"They promised us work every day, and that we were going to earn $100 a day," Lopez said.

Workers said the Gonzalez family held a meeting in the state of Colima and recruited the workers for a six-month stay here.

CRLA Inc. attorney Cynthia Rice said at a press conference Thursday in Sacramento that farm-labor advocates are concerned abuses such as those claimed in the lawsuit could become more common with changes that Bush Administration is currently making to the H-2A program.