Summary of a Recent
Judicial Development in
Labor

Court Grants Migrant Workers' Motion
to Certify Two Class Actions

Randal Busby
National AgLaw Center Research Assistant

Several agricultural workers have sought certification of two classes alleging that several violations of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act ("AWPA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1801-1872, occurred during their employment at tomato and chili pepper packing houses located in Florida. Martinez v. Mecca Farms, Inc., 213 F.R.D. 601, 603 (S.D. Fla. 2002). The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has granted the workers' motions for class certification, ruling that undocumented aliens had standing under the AWPA to challenge compensation for work already performed; the proposed classes met the numerosity and commonality requirements for certification pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a); and undocumented workers were not inherently inadequate class representatives for purposes of typicality and adequacy of representation requirements. See id. at 604-07

The plaintiff workers brought an action against Mecca Farms, Inc. ("Mecca Farms"), Maria Medrano, and Candido Munuz (collectively, "defendants"). See id. at 603. Medrano and Muniz were labor contractors who hired and recruited workers for Mecca Farms' packing houses. See id.

The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated the AWPA while they were employed at Mecca Farms' tomato and chili pepper packing houses. See id. at 603. They sought to certify two classes pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(b)(3): "(1) a 'tomato class' comprised of migrant workers employed at Mecca Farms, Inc.'s (Mecca) tomato packing house from October, 1996, through March, 2002, and (2) a 'pepper class' comprised of migrant workers employed at Mecca Farms' chili pepper packing house during the same time period." Id.

The plaintiffs claimed that at Mecca Farms' pepper packing house, Mecca Farms used a time clock that automatically totaled hours worked on a daily basis, but that at its tomato packing house it calculated work time based on an estimate of the actual "belt time" or the time that the "line" was operational. See id. The plaintiffs challenged Mecca's timekeeping methods and claimed that the workers should have been paid for lapsed time on time cards rather than the "belt time." See id. Moreover, the tomato house workers sought compensation for idle time at the packing house while awaiting the authorization to "punch in" on the time clock and for waiting periods at the packing house due to mechanical repairs. See id. The plaintiffs also claimed that they were entitled to overtime pay because none of the workers in either of the packing houses were paid overtime wages, although many had worked more than forty hours during a number of pay periods. See id. In addition, they alleged that Mecca kept the employee Social Security taxes that were deducted from their wages and failed to turn them over to the government. See id.

The court first considered Mecca Farms' argument that because the workers were undocumented aliens they lacked standing to seek recovery under the AWPA. See id. at 604. Mecca relied upon Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002) to support this argument. See id. In Hoffman, a group of employees who had attempted to unionize were fired in violation of § 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA"). See id. The National Labor Relations Board ordered that the workers be reinstated with back pay, but the Supreme Court reversed "the Board's back pay award, finding that the Board's decision 'discounting the misconduct of illegal alien employees' subverted the purpose of the Immigration Reform and Control Act" ("IRCA"), Pub. L. No. 99-603, 100 Stat. 3359 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 8 U.S.C.). Id. The defendants asserted that Hoffman suggested that the district court must "'give due regard for Congress' clear and unequivocal policy pronouncements with respect to the employment of unlawful aliens.'" Id. (citation omitted).

The court stated that

[d]efendant's [sic] reading of Hoffman with regard to this case is flawed for a number of reasons. Defendant [sic] suggests that Hoffman removed undocumented aliens' right to charged with the NLRB, and therefore, undocumented farmworkers similarly had no standing to sue under the . . . [AWPA]. However, the Hoffman court dealt with the remedies available to the undocumented, and not his right to file a charge with the NLRB. In fact, the right of undocumented aliens to bring suit under the NLRA was upheld in Sure-Tan Inc. v. NLRB 467 U.S. 883 (1984), where the Supreme Court stated "[s]ince undocumented aliens are not among the few groups of workers expressly exempted by Congress [in the] . . . [National Labor Relations Act] they plainly come within the broad statutory definition of 'employee.'

Id.

The court also stated that the defendants failed "to make an important distinction between post-termination 'back pay' and other forms of renumeration [sic]." Id. It stated that "[b]ack pay seeks to make an employee whole by awarding wages that would have been earned but for an unlawful firing. Hoffman treats this as wages for 'years of work not performed, for wages that could not lawfully have been earned, and for a job obtained in the first instance by unlawful fraud.'" Id. (quoting Hoffman, 535 U.S. at 1284 n.4). It clarified that the workers in the present case did not seek post-termination back pay, but rather that they sought pay for work that had already been performed. See id. Thus, it rejected Mecca's standing challenge since the workers' suit involved compensation for work already performed. See id. See also Patel v. Quality Inn South, 846 F.2d 700, 705-06 (11th Cir. 1988); Del Rey Tortilleria, Inc. v. NLRB, 976 F.2d 1115, 1122 n.7 (7th Cir. 1992); In re Reyes, 814 F.2d 168 (5th Cir. 1987).

The court next considered whether the workers satisfied the class certification requirements pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a). See id. at 605. It explained that

[a]ccording to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, one or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all only if: (1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, (2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class, (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class, and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interest of the class.

Id. (citing Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a); Jackson v. Motel 6 Multipurpose, Inc., 130 F.3d 999, 1005 (11th Cir. 1997)).

The court first examined whether the class was so numerous that joinder of all members would be impracticable. See id. It explained that "[t]he court may make commonsense assumptions in order to find support for numerosity." Id. (citation omitted). It concluded that the proposed classes satisfied the numerosity requirement because Medrano supplied fifty-nine or sixty workers a day at the tomato house, and Munuz provided approximately 1,000 employees to both packing houses each season.

Next, the court examined whether there were common questions of law or fact common to the class. See id. It stated that "[t]he clearest common question of fact in this matter is whether [d]efendant Mecca Farms, Inc. was the [p]laintiffs' employer." Id. It also stated that there was a common legal question as to whether Mecca violated the AWPA by failing to deposit Social Security taxes with the Internal Revenue Service. See id. The court further stated that since both classes sought to recover overtime wages, this presented another legal issue common to all- whether Mecca was exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 207(a). See id.

In addition, the court noted that the tomato house workers asserted several claims relevant to their class specifically. See id. First, the tomato workers claimed that Mecca's method of only compensating the workers for "belt time" violated the AWPA. See id. Second, they sought to be compensated for the time that they were required to wait before clocking in at the beginning of the work day. See id. The court concluded that "[a]s plaintiffs have demonstrated (once again with no contrary argument by Defendants), common legal and factual questions exists with regard to all of the Plaintiffs." Id. at 605-06.

Next, the court examined whether the claims or defenses of the representative parties were typical of the claims or defenses of the classes. See id. at 606. The court explained that "[t]he class representative must possess the same interest and suffer the same injury as the class members." Id. (citations omitted). It also explained that the claims of the representatives are typical if it could be reasonably expected that other class members would raise the same issues. See id. (citation omitted). It further explained that the claims of the representative need to be similar to those of the class in order to provide adequate representation. See id. (citation omitted). The court stated that there was no indication that any member of the classes had been treated differently or that any member had any particularly different interest in the suit. See id. Therefore, it concluded that "[a]ny claims relevant to the representatives will also be relevant to the class as a whole."

Id.

Finally, the court examined whether the representative parties would fairly and adequately protect the interest of the classes. See id. The court explained that Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a)(4) requires that "'the representative parties . . . fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.'" Id. (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P.23(a)(4)). Due to the immigration status of the classes representatives, the defendants challenged both the typicality and adequacy of representation requirements. See id. The defendants argued that the representatives could be subject to deportation and, therefore, could not properly represent the interests of the classes. See id. The court rejected this argument, stating that "[u]ndocumented individuals have been allowed to represent classes of deportable aliens." Id. (citing McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U.S. 479 (1991) and Jean v. Nelson, 727 F.2d 957 (11th Cir. 1984)).

Lastly, the defendants asserted that the class representatives did not possess a "sufficient level of knowledge and understanding to be able to control or prosecute the litigation pursuant to Rule 23(a)." Id. at 607. The court stated that

[h]owever, as held in Surowitz v. The Hilton Hotels Corp., 383 U.S. 363 . . . (1966), the Supreme Court found the plaintiff in a shareholder class action suit to be an adequate class representative despite her "positive disavowal of any relevant knowledge or information other than the fact of her stock ownership." Although the representative must have more knowledge than a lay person about the case . . . the Court is persuaded that the individuals' understanding of the basic nature of their claims survives the Surowitz standard. Plaintiffs have sufficiently established that they can adequately represent the class.

Id.

The case was decided on Nov. 25, 2002; this summary was posted Dec. 23, 2003.