ESTEBAN ALFARO-HUITRON, ELEAZAR GARCIA-MATA, JOSE ANTONIO GARCIA-MATA, JUAN GUZMAN, JOSE GERARDO JASSO, RAUL JASSO-CERDA, ISMAEL MARTINEZ GONZALEZ, ENRIQUE ROJAS-TORRES, LAZARO ROJAS-TORRES, TRINIDAD SANTOYO-GARCIA PEDRO TAMEZ, ANGELA TREJO, EFRAIN TREJO, SANTOS TREJO, & YANETH TREJO, Plaintiffs, v. WKI OUTSOURCING SOLUTIONS, LLC, JAIME CAMPOS, CERVANTES AGRIBUSINESS, CERVANTES ENTERPRISES, INC., RJF FARMS, INC., RONNIE J. FRANZOY, TIERRA DE DIOS FARMS, LLC, RIO VALLEY CHILI INC., LACK FARMS, INC. & SKYLINE PRODUCE, LLC Defendants., No. 215CV00210JCHJHR, 2018 WL 4685578 (D.N.M. Sept. 28, 2018);
This matter is before the Court on Defendants joint Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiffs are United States citizens or lawful permanent residents who were given hiring priority through the federal H-2A program to provide manual labor on fields and land owned by the Defendants during the 2011-2012 harvest seasons. The farm labor contractor who recruited and hired Plaintiffs – Defendants WKI Outsourcing Solutions, LLC (“WKI”) and its owner Jaime Campos – never actually furnished Plaintiffs to work for the Cervantes Defendants. Citing a drought, Campos cancelled Plaintiffs’ work contracts at the last minute. Plaintiffs allege there was no such unusual drought; the real reason Campos cancelled their contracts was because he realized there were too many qualified U.S. workers, so he would not be able to access foreign laborers from Mexico, which was Defendants’ alleged goal all along.
Based on the theory that the Cervantes Defendants and WKI “jointly employed” Plaintiffs, they sued the Cervantes Defendants under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 1801-1854 (“AWPA”) contending, among other things, that they were equally liable for WKI’s cancellation of their work contracts. The Court concludes that the Cervantes Defendants’ motion should be granted because they did not jointly employ Plaintiffs.