Seven migrant farmworkers from Texas claim they were recruited to work in Iowa, where they were paid illegally low wages and forced to live in substandard housing, says Iowa Capital Dispatch. The workers are suing Remington Seeds, which operates a seed corn processing facility; and Javier Chapa, a Texas labor broker who runs Chapa Global Contracting.
Chapa was allegedly hired by Remington to recruit, house, and supervise migrant farmworkers in Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. Their lawsuit claims the defendants violated the law that requires employers to pay American workers, such as the plaintiffs, the same wages paid to foreigners enrolled in the H-2A program, which allows foreign nationals to fill temporary agricultural jobs.
The plaintiffs allege that Chapa concealed the fact that he was employing higher-paid foreign nationals in a seed corn processing plant in Nebraska, and that Chapa also refused to let the plaintiffs take the higher-paying Nebraska jobs.
