Seventeen migrant employees who were hired for temporary work on a hemp farm have sued the employer for a variety of mistreatments, including partially unpaid wages, unsafe housing conditions and verbal abuse.
Their employer was Colt Jamison Hansen, who does business under various entities, according to the lawsuit, including WestCoast Growers LLC, Topshelf Hemp LLC, and Fire Hemp LLC. Hansen and his companies are all named as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
According to the lawsuit, Hansen used an unlicensed farm labor contractor to hire the employees to harvest, dry, clean and sort industrial hemp on his farm in Grants Pass, Oregon.
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Hansen did not fill out or administer required I-9, W-4 or W-2 forms, according to the lawsuit, and the defendants did not deduct or withhold taxes from their wages.
The lawsuit alleges Hansen and “his supervisors” carried several types of firearms at all times and yelled “profanities and demeaning words and demanded that Plaintiffs work fast.”
The employees worked more than 12 hours a day, according to the lawsuit, often without rest or lunch breaks.
Hansen also provided the workers with housing. According to the lawsuit, 11 workers shared an empty trailer with one bed. Others were “assigned an abandoned, dilapidated, and unsafe house to stay in,” according to the lawsuit.
Most of the plaintiffs slept on the floor and did not have access to running water or sanitary cooking facilities. The defendant also did not clean the port-a-potties the plaintiffs were forced to use or trash generated by the plaintiffs during their time there, according to the lawsuit.
“Defendants failed to ensure that the housing complied with applicable health and safety standards,” the lawsuit states. “The housing provided by Defendants for Plaintiffs and other migrant workers was unsafe, unhealthy, and in violation of the law.”
The plaintiffs also did not receive the full $20 per hour they were verbally promised, as the defendant did not provide written contracts.
The employees worked at the company on a staggered basis from Oct. 26 to Nov. 12. They left the company after the defendants failed to pay their wages, the lawsuit states.
“Plaintiffs and other migrant workers have suffered damages by being required to live in unsafe and unhealthy agricultural labor housing and will be subject to the real threat of having to continue to live in unlawful housing conditions in the absence of injunctive relief,” the lawsuit says. “Plaintiffs and other migrant workers will continue to work in agriculture and suffer harm unless defendants are enjoined [from] future law violations… .”
As reported by Law360, the plaintiffs are seeking:
$500 per violation (and per worker) of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act and the Oregon Camp Operator Registration Act;
$1,000 per violation (and per worker) of the Oregon Contractor Registration Act;
Between $460 and $2,600 for nonpayment of wages, plus statutory penalty wages of $4,800 per worker;
Compensation of “unpaid overtime wages and liquidated damages, prejudgment interest on their unpaid and penalty wages, and attorney fees;” and
A court order preventing the defendants from housing migrant workers in “unregistered agricultural labor housing.”
