“An attempted crackdown on minimum wage and child labor violations at berry farms in the Pacific Northwest has sparked a backlash that threatens one of the U.S. Labor Department’s most potent tools for enforcing protections for farm workers,” writes Bridget Huber at the news site FairWarning. Huber refers to “hot goods” cases in which the Labor Department can halt shipments of products as leverage to see that workers are paid fairly. At least 20 hot-goods cases have been filed against growers since 2010, she says. While worker advocates say aggressive government action is needed, lawmakers from the U.S. Northwest back a bill to preclude the use of hot-goods authority in agriculture.
The flashpoint was a 2012 case in Oregon in which the Labor Department threatened to delay shipment of $5.5 million of fruit in order to collect $240,000 from three growers on grounds they underpaid 1,000 workers. Two of the growers have won a court decision this year to get back their money with the judge saying they were forced under “economic duress” to agree to the settlement. A distinction in the case was the Labor Department did not put the money into an escrow account. Farm groups say the government over-stepped its authority and bullied farmers. Farmworker groups worry the dispute will mean less enforcement of wage laws even if Congress does not ban the use of hot-goods powers on the farm.