Court House News Service | 29 January 2019
MIAMI (CN) — Fending off labor claims from 54 migrant workers, a lawyer for a Florida strawberry farm told 11th Circuit that the company is not liable for the illegal fees its pickers paid a recruiter.
The hearing this morning before a three-judge panel stems from a lawsuit filed in 2015 by Selso Ulloa and other Hondurans who earned about $10 an hour picking strawberries for Fancy Farms in Hillsborough County.
Though the U.S. Department of Labor specifically bars employers like Fancy Farms from collecting recruitment fees from workers it brings over on H-2A visas, Fancy Farms contracted its recruitment work out to a company called All Nation Staffing in 2013.