G Farms reaches settlement on housing

A farm near El Mirage reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor after investigators found 69 migrant workers from Mexico housed in converted school buses and semitruck tractor trailers last June.

The Department of Labor discovered workers at G Farms in “simply inhumane” living conditions that included overcrowded, unsanitary, and inadequately ventilated conditions as the summer heat rolled in. Safety issues at the farm on Litchfield Road in unincorporated Maricopa County included gas lines dangling through windows of a bus converted to a kitchen, the Labor Department said.

One of the workers in June had told

The Arizona Republic that the housing was “precarious,” but stopped short of criticizing the conditions. “Look, if they put me under the sun right now … it won’t matter. We want to work,” Carreon Lopez had said.

G Farms owner Santiago Gonzalez, along with Le Felco, a Wyoming-based firm that helped obtain the temporary work visas, must notify workers of their rights and provide a work contract written in their native language, according to the consent judgments issued in U.S. District Court of Arizona this month.

LeFelco also agreed to review visa applications with its clients to ensure accuracy. Future abuses could lead to contempt of court charges against G Farms or LeFelco, according to the judgment.

The judgement requires G Farms to provide safe housing that matches what’s submitted in the visa application and better track workers’ hours and pay them $10.95 per hour.

G Farms placed the workers in a hotel within 24 hours after learning of the unsafe living conditions and remedied the safety violations, Michael King, an attorney representing the farm, said.

The attorney said this was the first time G Farms participated in the H-2A guest worker program, and relied on LeFelco to ensure compliance.

“G Farms and the Gonzalez family, they’re farmers,” King said. “They’re not government-compliance-paperwork people — that’s foreign to them.”