Ex-sugar cane cutters take pay fight to U.S. court
They say a major producer cheated them of more than $5-million in 1987-92. A state judge has rejected their class action.
By Associated Press
Published September 9, 2005
ORLANDO - A group of more than 1,000 former sugar cane cutters took a 16-year-old battle against one of the nation's largest sugar producers to federal court Thursday, suing Osceola Farms Co. to recover more than $5-million they say is owed them in back wages.
The class action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach came after a judge ruled this summer that the workers couldn't continue as a class in their lawsuit first filed in 1989 in state court. That required them to file separate claims.
Joseph Klock, an attorney for Osceola Farms, was in Cleveland and did not return phone calls Thursday. Armando Tabernilla, a registered agent for Osceola Farms, did not return a call to his home. No one answered the phone at an Osceola Farms warehouse in Riviera Beach, the only listing for the company.
Osceola Farms is a subsidiary of Flo-Sun Inc., one of the nation's largest sugar producers, which is controlled by the politically influential Fanjul family.
Attorneys for the cane cutters, mostly laborers from the Caribbean who came to the United States as temporary workers, brought their case to federal court under the recently passed Class Action Fairness Act. The law was designed to send the majority of class action lawsuits to federal courts, which are believed less likely than state courts to award multimillion-dollar verdicts to people suing large companies.
"This is a great irony," said Greg Schell, a lawyer with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, who is one of three attorneys representing the cane cutters. "This probusiness statute is going to be used by a bunch of starving cane cutters from the West Indies."
The cane cutters say that between 1987 and 1992, Osceola Farms paid less than what was promised in the workers' contracts and falsified the number of hours they worked in documents filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. The documents were required as part of the H2-A program, which allows foreign laborers to come temporarily to the United States if domestic workers can't be found to do a particular job.
The workers were paid on a "piece rate" basis, or by the amounts harvested. But federal law requires that agriculture employees earn a fixed rate per hour regardless of how much cane is cut and says employers must make up any shortfall between that rate and the worker's piece rate earnings.
"That costs money to make up the difference," Schell said. "So they would make up the records and underreport the hours."
The workers are seeking more than $5-million in back wages but Schell said the amount owed could be more than $10-million when interest is considered. If the case is allowed to proceed as a class action, it could encompass more than 2,000 former cane cutters, he said.
Before 1994, when mechanization was popularized, sugar cane in Florida was hand cut by workers with machetes.
The lawsuit against Osceola Farms is the last of five cases against sugar companies seeking back wages for workers. One case was settled and workers in the three other cases lost in court.
