Mexican workers sue over Kentucky farm conditions

Thirty nine Mexican guest workers are suing the Kentucky tobacco farmers who hired them through a government program for seasonal work, according to a WUKY (Lexington, Kentucky).

Three lawsuits have been filed by the workers who allege a number of abuses while they were working for Kentucky farmers through the H-2A program, a program that allows farmers to hire foreign workers when they cannot find US workers to fill jobs.

According to an Associated Press story relayed by the TMA, the three separate lawsuits were filed in the Kentucky Federal court last week by the non-profit legal advocacy firm Kentucky Equal Justice Center and Nashville, Tennessee-based Southern Migrant Legal Services, a federally-funded organization that handles the legal needs of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The lawsuits accuse tobacco farms in the counties of Scott, Monroe and Nicholas of paying the workers substandard wages, providing squalid housing and threatening some with jail or deportation if they complained or left, in violation of federal and state labor and civil rights laws.

The plaintiffs are seeking back wages and other damages.

The Federal government sets different H-2A wage rates by state. Caitlin Berberich, an attorney representing the workers, said that in Kentucky the rate was $9.80 per hour in 2013, $10.10 an hour in 2014 and is $10.28 an hour this year, but that some workers were paid less than the current federal minimum wage of $7.25.

Under the program, employers hiring H-2A workers are required to provide free housing and reimburse workers for costs incurred to reach their jobs.

The plaintiffs alleged that they were living in rat-infested housing with improper toilets, beds, ventilation and heating.