Yakima Valley farmworkers win $1.8 million in lawsuit

Two Eastern Washington fruit growers and the labor contractor they used to bring legal Thai workers to their farms three years ago have been ordered to pay $1.8 million to some 600 Yakima Valley farmworkers — some of them illegal immigrants — who claim they were displaced.

A federal judge this week found Los Angeles-based Global Horizons, and growers Valley Fruit Orchards of Wapato and Green Acre Farms of Harrah, both in Yakima County, in violation of state and federal labor laws, including willfully withholding wages and failing to provide information in Spanish about available jobs.

The ruling entitles each farmworker to damages ranging from $2,000 to $4,000.

In the class-action suit filed two years ago, the farmworkers claimed they were either not hired, or hired and later fired, by Global. They further claimed they were displaced by 170 workers Global imported from Thailand under a federal guest-worker program.

Lori Isley of Columbia Legal Services, which represented the local farmworkers, called the ruling "both a victory for farmworkers who tried to work or did work for the two growers, and for farmworkers everywhere who have been harmed by the unlawful and unscrupulous practice of Global Horizon."

She said many of the farmworkers are still in the area, though some were migrants who have moved on. Some are illegal immigrants, but under state and federal law, she said, "all are entitled to protections, regardless of immigration status."

Additionally, the judge ordered Global and its owner, Mordechai Orian, to pay nearly $40,000 in sanctions by July 24 or face criminal contempt charges.

Global has been dogged across the country by lawsuits and state and federal investigations. The company lost its license to operate in Washington and has been banned by the federal government from bringing new foreign workers into the country for at least three years.

Orian's attorney, Randolph Shiner, said he plans to file a motion for reconsideration. Global is so financially strapped it could not afford the sanctions, he said.

The local workers "are here illegally and don't like the fact that the Thai workers were coming in and taking their jobs," he said. "Ultimately, the ones being hurt are the growers who can't get legal workers."

The ruling comes amid federal crackdowns on illegal immigrants, and as competition from construction and other more stable jobs shrinks the labor pool. Also, as that labor force ages, young people are not replacing the older workers.

The shortages have sent growers scrambling to find workers to pick cherries and thin fields in anticipation of the apple harvest.

More than two dozen of them have applied to bring 1,543 foreign workers here themselves — mostly from Mexico — under the same guest-worker program Global used.

The U.S. Department of Labor has already approved applications for nearly 1,000 of those workers.

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com