Immigrant workers sue Svihel Vegetable Farm for inadequate wages and ‘deplorable’ conditions

Nearly 40 migrant workers allege in a federal lawsuit that a central Minnesota vegetable farm shortchanged their wages and subjected them to “deplorable” working and living conditions.

The workers, who come mainly from Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, sued John Svihel and Svihel Vegetable Farm in the U.S. District Court for Minnesota on Monday. They claim that Svihel and his company violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

In a statement, Svihel Farm said the lawsuit is “wrong on the facts and the law, full of falsehoods, falsehoods and outright lies.”

The employees, represented by the Minneapolis law firm Chestnut Cambronne, were recruited between 2013 and 2022 to work at the Svihel farm in Foley, Minnesota, about 15 miles northeast of St. Cloud. They have H-2A visas designed for temporary foreign agricultural workers.

The farmworkers signed labor contracts calling for a seven-hour workday on weekdays and four hours on Saturdays, with Sundays off, the lawsuit said. Any additional hours were to be considered overtime.

But the workers were not given Sundays off, and they often worked 17 hours a day or more than 100 hours a week — without overtime pay, the lawsuit alleges: “Paychecks did not reflect this and were regularly shortchanged by several hundred dollars. “

In the vegetable fields, workers were not allowed to drink water or use the toilet, while pesticides were sprayed “on or near,” the complaint states. Employees were only allowed to go to a local grocery store once every 15 days, as opposed to once a week as stated in their original employment contracts, the lawsuit said.

Svihel Farm said it pays H-2A workers $18.50 per hour, with overtime at $27.75 per hour. The company said it meets or exceeds federal and state requirements for the H-2A program for immigrant workers. “We are proud of the working conditions, benefits and compensation we provide.”

The farm offers free communal housing to workers. But in the lawsuit, the workers allege that the living quarters in Foley — and in Santiago, Minnesota, eight miles away — “worn out, unclean mattresses, bed bugs, cramped living quarters, extremely limited kitchen facilities and food storage, inadequate restroom facilities, and washers and dryers that require quarters were to use.”

Several workers claim that Svihel’s farm and its owner subjected them to exploitation, verbal and “psychological” abuse, fear, humiliation and various physical ailments.

A defendant currently living in Honduras claims that Svihel threw a cabbage at him and hit him in the face. Another, who lives in Florida, claims he urinated on himself when Svihel refused to stop while driving workers to the fields – and was forced to work without clean clothes.

The Svihel Farm called such claims “clickbait language” that is part of a “false narrative” promoted by the worker advocates, who are looking for “a quick payday.”

Two workers claim Svihel Farm retaliated against them for speaking to the U.S. Department of Labor during its investigation into Svihel several years ago.

Svihel, his company and two labor brokers — one in Ohio and another in the Dominican Republic — were indicted in 2015 on conspiracy charges that allegedly forced foreign workers in Minnesota to pay illegal fees and kickbacks. The charges include several counts of making false statements to the U.S. government.

The Ohio real estate agent was convicted in federal court and sentenced to five years in prison. Svihel and the Dominican broker each pleaded guilty in June 2016 to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud in the contracting of foreign labor; the other charges were dropped.

Svihel agreed to pay the employees restitution of $198,677 for kickbacks, $532,822 for unpaid overtime and $38,064 for unpaid wages overall. He also agreed, with Labor Department approval, to hire a supervisor to monitor compliance with immigrant worker laws on his farm until 2017.

The allegations against the Svihel farm are the latest claim of abuse by immigrant workers against a Minnesota farm.

In March, three South African workers sued a western Minnesota manure spreading company for labor violations, seeking back wages and damages. In January, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said sued a dairy plant in Paynesville, Minnesota, claiming that workers were forced to live in squalid conditions and suffered a $3 million wage shortfall.

In federal bankruptcy court last fall, Minnesota’s Department of Labor and Industry accused HyLife, a Canadian pork company that operates a plant in Windom, Minnesota, of illegally withholding tens of thousands of dollars in back wages from its largely immigrant workforce, including many short-term wages. term, agricultural visa holders.