Seasonal workers sue agricultural giant

Far too many farmworkers tell the same story: a recruiter promises them steady work and good pay, only to leave them more or less stranded in terrible living conditions with little work.  This story reported by The Monitor is just one example of a much larger trend.

As a day laborer, Raul Salas would often have to wait for odd jobs that were never steady and barely allowed him to make a living.

So he says he jumped at the opportunity when, last year on a June day, a fellow laborer named Pensamiento offered him a seasonal job detasseling corn in Indiana.

"He came up to me over there," said Salas, pointing to a spot in downtown Brownsville where day laborers were known to gather to wait for work. "He said it would be really good work for me."

Pensamiento took him and others from around the Rio Grande Valley to the Weslaco Branch of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., an Iowa-based corn seed producer, Salas recounted, speaking in Spanish. There, a contractor named Juan San Miguel persuaded them to go to the fields near Warsaw, Ind., with the promise of high wages and substantial bonuses, he said.

But Salas, 69, is now one of 20 migrant workers who this month filed a federal lawsuit against San Miguel and Pioneer, which they said failed to pay them minimum wage, took illegal deductions from their wages and forced them to live in rundown, overcrowded hotel rooms.

Learn more about workers and wages here.