Yet another company pays a civil penalty after mistreating H-2A visa workers in Florida
An Okeechobee farming company paid a $10,900 civil penalty after it forced its H-2A visa workers to live in a trailer that allowed just 64 feet per worker, and didn’t have a first-aid kit or a fire extinguisher, the Department of Labor announced.
Coco Sod Farms joins Mississippi-based H2A Complete, which violated the H-2A program’s meal requirements, and Lake Placid-based Red Harvesting, which committed food, shelter and transportation H-2A violations, as companies mistreating the workers it brought to Florida.
The H-2A program allows companies to import temporary, nonimmigrant workers to do temporary and seasonal farm work.
In the case of Coco Sod, a company run by president Fernando Vergara, Labor said that Wage and Hour Division “investigators determined the employer housed its H-2A workers at a location different than they listed on the job order they used to secure the workers. The employer actually housed workers in a property that had not had a proper inspection.”
And that actual structure was a 900-square-foot trailer. The program requires 100 square feet per worker.
Coco Sod crammed 14 workers into the trailer, or 64.3 square feet per worker.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 7:34 AM.
