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THE RECORDER
By Mike McKee
Farm workers filled the California Supreme Court on Tuesday to hear
arguments in a case about unpaid wages that could affect millions of
low-paid employees in unrelated professions across the business
spectrum.
The court is being asked to define what constitutes an employer within
the meaning of state Industrial Welfare Commission
wage orders. In the case at hand, farm workers contend that
two companies that market and sell strawberries fall within that meaning
and are liable for the unpaid wages of about 180 berry pickers after the
independent contractor who hired them became insolvent.
Two attorneys representing the marketing companies said after oral
arguments that the court's ruling will have an impact on any business
relationship in which a company hires an independent contractor. One
mentioned department stores' contracts with shoemakers, while an amicus
curiae brief filed by several legal services groups cited food delivery
services for restaurants and janitors working for subcontractors of
large management companies.
As Justice Marvin Baxter noted during oral arguments: "This isn't an
arrangement peculiar to agriculture."
After not getting paid for harvesting berries in 2000, farm workers sued
grower Isidro Munoz and two sales and marketing companies,
Guadalupe-based Apio Inc. and Combs Distribution Co. of Santa Maria,
alleging that all three were employers as defined by the IWC's wage
orders as anyone who exercises "control over wages, hours or working
conditions."
Apio and Combs loaned Munoz money under a complex contract that gave
them the right to sell the fruit he grew and oversee his operations.
After Munoz filed for bankruptcy, the farm workers focused their
attention on the two companies, saying that the IWC also defined
employers as anyone who "suffers or permits any person to work."
The appellate court disagreed,
holding in 2003 that Apio and Combs "did not exercise
sufficient control over the workers and the agricultural operation" to
be employers.
During oral arguments Tuesday, Justice Joyce Kennard addressed that
topic, saying that while state labor codes allowing employees to bring
suits for unpaid wages don't define an employer, "one could, in my view,
come to the reasonable conclusion that it was Munoz who was the
employer."
She then suggested that Apio and Combs could be considered more like
brokers, rather than employers.
The farm workers' lawyer, William Hoerger, director of litigation
advocacy and training for San Francisco-based
California Rural Legal Assistance, disagreed.
"It is clear that Apio controlled every single aspect of the operation
from beginning to end," he said, noting that it leased the land to Munoz
and decided such things as when to harvest, how much to harvest and
whether to harvest at all.
Combs' involvement wasn't as extensive, Hoerger said, but its owners
"called the financial shots" in the arrangement with Munoz.
Both businesses, he added, made payments in advance to Munoz to have
exclusive rights to the crop.
Baxter, who grew up on a farm near
Baxter, who loves hypotheticals, had one for
Would that, he asked, create employer responsibility for the farmer?
Anastassiou said it would depend upon whether the contractor was truly
independent or the farmer actually controlled the work.
Terrence O'Connor, a partner with
"The real bad guy, if there is one in this case," he said, "is Munoz."
A ruling in
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