A federal judge has imposed sanctions on a Putnam County nursery that disobeyed a previous court order in a U.S. Department of Labor investigation of alleged intimidation of seasonal agricultural workers from Mexico.
“It is troubling,” U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti noted in an April 16 opinion, that Berkshire Nursery & Supply Corp. and owner Jesus Flores violated unambiguous terms of a 2023 order, “just days after the court issued it.”
The Labor Department charged Flores and the Patterson nursey with retaliating against workers and obstructing its investigation, in January 2023.
Berkshire Nursery employs foreign seasonal agricultural laborers under the H-2A visa program. Two workers who were hired for the 2022 season claimed that they were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and used for non-agricultural jobs.
When they complained, Flores allegedly threatened to deport them and use purported connections to a Mexican cartel to intimidate their families back home.
The Labor Department claimed that Flores instructed employees to not speak with investigators, and threatened to deport them unless they lied about their duties and hours worked.
Judge Briccetti instructed Flores and the nursery in a February 2023 consent order to uphold the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. He ordered them not to harm or threaten employees, obstruct the Labor Department, or fire anyone without first giving the Labor Department seven days notice.
Last June the Labor Department discovered that it had not been notified about an employee who was fired 11 days after Flores consented to Judge Briccetti’s order. Then Berkshire identified another employee who had been fired last June, and it conceded that the agency was not notified.
The Labor Department asked the court to find Flores and Berkshire in contempt and to impose sanctions to prevent future disobedience.
Flores responded that he thought the court order applied only to H-2A visa workers. The first man to leave was not a H-2A visa worker, he said, and the timing of his departure had nothing to do with retaliation for his participation in the investigation. The second man was the general manager and was not a H-2A worker.
Judge Briccetti found the defendants in contempt.
The 2023 consent order was clear and unambiguous, he ruled, and applied to all workers. The defendants conceded that the agency was not notified beforehand, and failed to demonstrate reasonable diligence in trying to comply with the order. The assertion that they misunderstood “is contrary to the plain text of the order.”
He ordered the defendants to post a statement about employee rights by May 16; allow someone from the Labor Department to enter the workplace and inform current employees about their rights no later than June 15; and pay a $500 fine for each new violation of the consent order.
“The above remedial sanctions are proper,” Briccetti stated, “because they will impose only a moderate burden on defendants but will incentivize them to abide by the court’s mandates.”
