As lawsuits pile up against farm labor contractors, they consider suing the state.

On a good day, harvesters can make $20 an hour in a field of sugar snap peas. Once they fill a plastic tote with about 20 pounds, they run it over to a foreman, who punches a card showing how much they’ve picked. That punch card becomes a record of how much the harvester will earn for the peas, which fetch 53 cents a pound from Azcona Harvesting, a Greenfield-based farm labor contractor.

Pier Azcona and his brother, Nick, employ about 1,200 workers at a time who harvest row crops and wine grapes for Salinas Valley growers. The crews are paid piece-rate, based on how much they pick.

Farmworkers historically haven’t been paid for the time they’re not picking, whether it’s spent walking from field to field, taking water breaks or attending safety meetings.

That’s changing, based in part on two appellate court decisions last year regarding “non-productive time,” and a spate of lawsuits against farm labor contractors. There are at least 11 pending lawsuits in Monterey County Superior Court alleging wage violations by farm labor contractors, and Azcona is one of the defendants. Three pea pickers filed a class-action lawsuit against the company April 24.

“This is bullshit,” Azcona says. “It’s legal extortion.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, Azcona started paying minimum wage for the time his crew members spent not harvesting, up to about $50 a week per person. But he could still be facing big penalties for back pay.

Another farm labor contractor, RC Packing, has agreed to pay $3.6 million in a similar class-action lawsuit.

RC Packing will pay $2.7 million to about 4,500 lettuce and broccoli harvesters, about $520 each, according to the settlement agreement reached June 9 – two weeks before a trial was scheduled to begin. ($1.2 million goes to attorney fees.)

Ron Barsamian, a Fresno-based attorney representing RC Packing, declined to comment on the agreement. “That’s supposed to be confidential,” he says.

Soquel-based attorney Santos Gomez filed the 2010 case against RC Packing and the recent case against Azcona.

“You’ve seen an uptick, simply because now rest periods are part of what employers must compensate piece-rate employees for,” Gomez says. “But I’ve been filing these cases for the last 15 years.”

With large settlements like the one RC Farms agreed to, the industry is on edge, and Azcona wants to fight back. His attorney, Fresno-based Anthony Raimondo, says the two appellate court decisions leave labor contractors in a lurch: “This whole industry has been kicked in the teeth.”

A higher-cost concern: a recent presentation by a deputy California labor commissioner informing labor contractors they owe not just minimum wage for non-productive time, but the average hourly wage – meaning a fast worker making $20 an hour picking would earn the same amount for time spent on water breaks.

Raimondo and Azcona say they’re in talks with fellow attorneys and contractors, respectively, about a potential lawsuit challenging California Labor Commissioner Julie Su.

“I think she has expanded the law in ways that exceed her authority,” Raimondo says.

Download PDF