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joe harcz Comcast joeharcz at comcast.net
Thu Sep 20 13:54:17 UTC 2012


Firm ordered to pay disabled employees

 

Judge: Texas company that funneled people to Iowa plant to work for 41 cents per hour must pay $1.37 million in back wages.

 

Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2012 12:00 am

 

Firm ordered to pay disabled employees

Associated Press |

0 comments

 

IOWA CITY -- A Texas company that profited for decades by supplying mentally disabled workers to an Iowa turkey plant at wages of 41 cents per hour must

pay the men $1.37 million in back wages, a federal judge ruled.

 

The judgment against Henry's Turkey Service in Goldthwaite is the third of more than $1 million against the company after state authorities in 2009 shut

down a dilapidated bunkhouse in rural Iowa where the men had lived since the 1970s.

 

The 32 employees had been paid $65 per month to work the processing line at a huge turkey plant in West Liberty after Henry's improperly deducted fees for

room and board, care, transportation and other expenses out of their pay and Social Security checks, U.S. District Judge Charles Wolle ruled. The pay scales

never changed during the 30-year period they worked, regardless of whether they worked more than 40 hours per week, he found.

 

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which alleged that Hill Country Farms violated the Americans with Disabilities

Act by paying the workers discriminatory wages. Wolle ordered a trial in March on the rest of the claims in the EEOC's lawsuit, which alleges that the

men faced a hostile work environment, harassment, verbal and physical abuse and other "adverse terms and conditions of employment" because of their disabilities.

 

Hill Country Farms, which did business as Henry's Turkey Service, offered little resistance to EEOC's wage claims. The company had been on contract to supply

workers to the plant starting in the 1970s when it was owned by Louis Rich Foods. By 2008, the company's contract with owner West Liberty Foods was worth

more than $500,000 for work performed by the men in the evisceration department.

 

Wolle said the company "engaged in unlawful and discriminatory pay practices" that deprived workers of wages they earned. He said the $1.37 million represents

how much more the intellectually disabled workers should have been paid between February 2007 and February 2009 for their work, based on wage rates paid

to similarly situated workers. Despite their disabilities, the workers "performed as productively and effectively as non-disabled workers doing the same

jobs," he ruled, and testimony showed they even helped train their replacements when Henry's Turkey was winding down operations.

 

The U.S. Dept. of Labor earlier won a $1.76 million judgment against Henry's on behalf of the workers for violating wage and overtime laws, and Iowa Workforce

development issued a $1.2 million fine. The company had agreed to change its wage practices in 2003 following a federal investigation, but it never did

so, Wolle ruled.

 

The Iowa Attorney General's Office last year declined to bring criminal charges against the company.

 

A company lawyer didn't immediately return a phone message Wednesday seeking comment.

 

© 2012 The Associated Press. 



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