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Federal Suit Alleges Exploitation of Maine Migrant Workers

A low-income, legal assistance group has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that 18 migrant workers were mistreated and misled after being recruited to Maine to work on the 2008 blueberry harvest. The workers are all American citizens born in Haiti, or Haitians who are legal, permanent residents of the U.S.

The complaint, filed on their behalf by Pine Tree Legal Assistance, charges multiple violations of a federal law meant to protect migrant and seasonal agriculture workers.

Maine is the nation's leading supplier of wild blueberries, and growers here depend on a huge influx of migrant labor every summer to help with the harvest. The federal Migrant and Seasonal Agriculture Worker Protection Act is designed to protect the rights of these workers, who frequently move from state to state, earning a living bringing in different crops.

But in 2008, Nan Heald says the law didn't stop Coastal Blueberry Service of Ellsworth, Hancock Foods, a labor recruiter and multiple housing providers from committing more than 250 violations involving the farm workers.

"The 18 individuals that we are representing were recruited to come and work in Maine based on representations about what they were going to get paid and how they were going to be housed," Heald says. "And those things did not prove to be true."

Heald, who runs Pine Tree Legal Assistance, says the workers were transported to Maine from southern and mid-Atlantic states in overcrowded buses. When they arrived, she says they got less money, per box of blueberries, than they had been promised. She says some workers were forced to live in pest-and-insect-infested apartments, and to share rooms.

"One of our clients is a woman who was expected to share a bedroom with male workers," Heald says. "She ended up sleeping in a car so she had privacy."

Heald says the lawsuit seeks lost wages for the workers, as well as compensatory damages for physical and emotional harm. But an attorney for two of the defendants says his clients will fight the charges in U.S. District Court. Frank McGuire, a lawyer with Bangor-based Rudman and Winchell, is representing Coastal Blueberry Service and Hancock Foods.

"Coastal Blueberry Service and  firmly deny having engaged in violations of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act, or authorizing anybody to do that on their behalf, or failing to pay wages that people had earned," McGuire says.

McGuire says the companies don't mistreatHancock Foods their workers. Hancock Foods, he notes, has a large number of satisfied workers of Haitian origin who return to work at the company year after year.

"These claims date from 2008. There's 302 pages to the complaint and 257 counts, and something like 2002 paragraphs," McGuire says. "And we plan to evaluate it."

Pine Tree says the case took a long time to develop because many of its clients are traveling from state to state and don't speak English well. McGuire says his clients will respond in court and mount a vigorous defense against the suit.