A federal judge says a California-based labor contracting company and a Maui pineapple farm are responsible for paying $8.7 million in a discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of 82 Thai workers who were brought to Hawaii as farm laborers.
U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi had previously found that Global Horizons Inc. and Maui Pineapple Co. engaged in a pattern or practice of harassment, discriminatory conduct and retaliation against the workers. She later filed default judgments against the now-defunct companies after they stopped actively defending themselves against the lawsuit.
On Friday, Kobayashi ruled that each of the 82 workers is owed $150,000 for the hostile work conditions, discrimination and retaliation they suffered at six Hawaii farms that hired them through Global Horizons. That amounts to $12.3 million.
Five of the farms — Captain Cook Coffee Co. Ltd., Del Monte Fresh Produce Inc., Kauai Coffee Co. Inc., Kalena Farms Inc. and Mac Farms of Hawaii — have already settled their share of the lawsuit for $3.6 million.
Of the remaining $8.7 million, Kobayashi ruled that Maui Pineapple is jointly responsible with Global Horizons for just $8.1 million because only 54 of the 82 Thai laborers had worked on the pineapple farm in 2004.
In November last year, after the five farms reached settlement agreements with the government, Global Horizons owner Mordechai Yosef Orian said his company was no longer in business and that he would not agree to any monetary settlement.
The federal government had also charged Orian, six former Global Horizons employees and a Thai labor recruiter with forced labor and other crimes involving 600 imported Thai farmworkers from 2001 to 2007 in what it said was the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted in the United States. The government later dropped the case after determining it was unlikely to prevail in proving the charges.
Michael Green, Orian’s Hawaii lawyer in both the civil and criminal litigation, said Orian lost everything defending himself.
Maui Pineapple shut down in December 2009 after former company executives formed Hali‘imaile Pineapple Co., bought out Maui Pineapple’s assets and licensed the "Maui Gold" trademark.
Based on statements from the workers and witnesses, and admissions by Global Horizons and Maui Pineapple, Kobayashi found that the Thai workers were paid less, forced to work harder and placed under tighter restrictions than Filipino and Micronesian workers. She also found that the Thai workers, unlike their Filipino and Micronesian counterparts, were forced to endure substandard living conditions including food shortages, overcrowding and inadequate sanitation. She said Thai workers who complained were threatened with violence and deportation.
Many of the Thai workers mortgaged their family land to pay exorbitant recruitment fees for their jobs. Some said 10 years later they are still paying off their debt, while others said they had to sell land to get out of debt.
It is unclear what the workers will be able to collect.
