North Carolina at Its Finest

North Carolina is great at two things these days. One is rampant labor exploitation. The other is horrendous wingnut state legislators. I wonder if we can combine those issues? Of course we can.

Seven former workers at Jackson Farming Company, the Sampson County farm owned by State Senator Brent Jackson, have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the farm, Jackson, and his son Rodney alleging gross violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the North Carolina Wage and Hour Act, and are seeking unpaid wages and damages.

Former worker José Alberto Aguilera-Hernandez says that Rodney Jackson confronted him on October 27, 2015, demanding that he pay $2,400 to replace a gas pump piece broken during a workplace accident.

Aguilera-Hernandez refused, was fired on the spot, and was forced to leave the farm.

Jackson then withheld back wages from the previous week’s work. Aguilera-Hernandez, a worker on an H2A visa from Mexico, was forced to solicit help from a local storeowner to get back home. The plaintiffs in the case say that farm employees threatened them to try to get them to drop the lawsuit, and after they went forward, were refused employment. With the way the H2A program works, Farm Labor Organizing Committee spokeswoman Briana Kemp says, the worker has to be formally requested by a grower in order to be brought to work in the U.S.

“I couldn’t believe he would treat another human being this way,” Aguilera-Hernandez said in a statement. “He knows I don’t know anyone here and don’t have any way of finding a place to stay or a way home.”

This is the kind of person who leads North Carolina. It’s a wonder the state has become a national outrage. I will also state once again that guestworker program are almost universally a disaster for worker rights.