Workers Claim Forced Labor: Group Of Guatemalans Says Nursery Paid Low Wages And Mistreated Them
By Kim Martineau and Mark Spencer, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Feb. 9–Marvin Coto flew north on a work visa, to plant trees in North Carolina and send money home to Guatemala. Instead, he says, he wound up at a nursery in Granby where he worked long hours for low wages. His family had to wire him money so he could eat.
He is one of a dozen Guatemalan workers who claim their treatment by the nursery amounted to human trafficking. The Guatemalans filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Imperial Nurseries and its corporate parent, Griffin Land & Nurseries, claiming they were lured to the U.S. on false pretenses, and mistreated once they got here. A group of Yale Law School students has taken up the immigrants’ cause, seeking back wages and civil fines.
“There was no escape,” said Coto, a stocky man with curly hair who spent most of the day sitting for interviews in a cluttered office at Yale. “We never let our guard down. We never relaxed. We just worked hard but no matter how hard we worked, we were never able to please them.”
The U.S. Department of Labor looked into allegations of human trafficking last June but found the workers had not been held against their will, said Monte Lake, an attorney for Imperial Nurseries. He said Imperial paid the workers legal wages through its contractor, Pro Tree Forestry Services, but that Pro Tree had not passed on that money to its workers. Imperial fired Pro Tree after the Department of Labor’s findings were issued, he added.
The lawsuit names Pro Tree and its owner, William Forero, who could not be reached for comment Thursday at his home in Tallahassee, Fla.
Last March, Coto, 33, left his wife and three children in Guatemala with the promise of a temporary job planting pine trees for $7.50 an hour, he said through a translator. He took out a loan to buy a plane ticket and work visa but when he landed in Greensboro, N.C., he and his coworkers were whisked away in a van. They rode for three days until Coto spotted a sign welcoming him to Hartford. There, they were shown to a filthy apartment, home to another group of young immigrants who were summarily evicted to make room for the new arrivals, said Coto. He knew something was wrong but, unable to speak English and with just a few dollars in his pocket, he didn’t know where to turn.
For the next three months, Coto and his coworkers spent grueling days packing trees into pots in Granby, under constant surveillance of their bosses, threatened with arrest and deportation if they complained, he said. Their bosses confiscated their passports, paid them $3.75 an hour, then deducted rent and other expenses from their pay, he said, making it hard to scrape together enough money even for meals of rice and beans.
Coto eventually fell sick after days working in the rain, with chemicals and fertilizers, he said. When he asked for a doctor, he said, he was threatened with firing. With his debt mounting, he was terrified of losing his job.
One day, while visiting a laundromat, Coto heard about the Church of God Pentecost on Lawrence Street in Hartford’s Frog Hollow section. Disillusioned, Coto told his story to the pastor, the Rev. Nelson Negron, and the church took up a collection for the Guatemalans.
“He said everything was different when they got here,” Negron said Thursday, through a translator. “He would cry when he talked about it.”
Through the church, Coto was referred to Yale and an immigrant-advocacy group, Junta for Progressive Action. Last June, Coto and his coworkers requested their passports, under the pretext of having money wired to them, as they had done previously. That night, Junta volunteers picked the men up and drove them to New Haven. Junta had collected nearly $7,000 in donations to rent the Guatemalans an apartment and buy them bedding and food.
Five of the workers still live in New Haven, while Coto has relocated to Hartford. With interest, his debt has ballooned to $6,000. The other six have either gone home to Guatemala or settled elsewhere in the U.S.
“These workers came here lawfully to earn a living and support their families,” said Nicole Hallett, a Yale student working on the case. “Instead, they were defrauded and trapped into conditions of forced labor.”
Few employees could be seen Thursday outside Imperial Nurseries in Granby, where a bitter wind whipped through dozens of plastic greenhouses that seemed to blend in with the snow on the frozen earth.
A sign at the entrance read, in English and Spanish: “We consistently provide superior in-demand plants in an environment that makes it easy to conduct business.” An employee at the company’s Salmon Brook Street office referred questions to Peter Hamilton, a public relations specialist in New York, who could not be reached late Thursday.
Human trafficking, for labor or sex, appears to be on the rise. Last year, the Connecticut legislature passed laws making trafficking punishable by criminal and civil penalties.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he has opened an investigation into the allegations, the first under the new laws, which he hopes to have finished in a few weeks.
“This case may very well become the poster child for vigorous enforcement of our new laws,” he said.
U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor declined to say whether his office is also investigating.
Courant staff writer Matt Kauffman contributed to this story.
Contact Kim Martineau at kmartineau@courant.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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