Bracamontes v. Weyerhaeuser Co., 87-2456

• Decision Date: 22 March 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-2456,87-2456
• Citation: 840 F.2d 271
• Parties: , 108 Lab.Cas. P 35,046 Ruben BRACAMONTES, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants v. The WEYERHAEUSER CO., et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 271

840 F.2d 271

56 USLW 2557, 108 Lab.Cas. P 35,046

Ruben BRACAMONTES, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants v. The WEYERHAEUSER CO., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 87-2456.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

March 22, 1988.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied April 25, 1988.

Marc Linder, Texas Rural Legal Aid, Inc., William Beardall, Weslaco, Tex., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Rose Law Firm, Tim Boe, Jim Hunter Birch, Little Rock, Ark., Ewers, Toothaker, Abbott, Talbot & Hamilton, Walter J. Passmore, McAllen, Tex., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before TIMBERS, ^* KING and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

Appellants are migrant workers whom appellees employed to plant pine seedlings in Alabama. They filed suit under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. The district court dismissed the suit because the MSPA did not apply to those performing forestry work exclusively. We reverse, finding that Congress intended the Act to apply to farm labor contractors who hire migrant workers for employment in the farming of trees.

I

Weyerhaeuser hired labor contractors to recruit migrant workers to plant pine seedlings on land owned by Weyerhaeuser in Alabama. The contractors recruited Ruben Bracamontes, Reyes Perez, and Pablo Martinez, Mexican-American migrant agricultural workers from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and employed Sendejo to transport the workers to Alabama.

The workers filed this suit on February 27, 1987, alleging violations of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, ¹ including its provisions for labor contractor registration, disclosure, transportation, housing, and confirmation of registration. The workers asked the district court to enjoin Weyerhaeuser from using farm labor contractors until the company determined that the contractors were registered with the Department of Labor.

The district court granted a motion to dismiss, ruling that the case was factually indistinguishable from Aguirre v. Davis Forestry Corp., ² in which the court decided that MSPA's predecessor statute, the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, did not apply to parties engaged exclusively in forestry activities. ³

II

Congress in 1963 began regulating contractors who supplied migrant agricultural laborers. The Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act defined "migrant worker" as "an individual whose primary employment is in agriculture...." ⁴ The FLCRA in turn defined agriculture by reference to Sec. 203 of the Fair Labor Standards Act ⁵ and Sec. 3121(g) of the Internal Revenue Code. ⁶ Both of these sections require that the work be performed on a traditional farm; neither section has been interpreted to include forestry work. ⁷

Congress amended FLCRA in 1974. In defining "agricultural employment" Congress retained the references to Sec. 203(f) and Sec. 3121(g) but added a third definition--agricultural employment included "the handling, planting, drying, packing, packaging, processing, freezing, or grading prior to delivery for storage of an agricultural or horticultural commodity in its unmanufactured state." ⁸ The MSPA retained this provision in Sec. 1802(3) when MSPA replaced FLCRA in 1984. ⁹

The dispute is over the scope of this third definition. Bracamontes contends that the phrase "agricultural or horticultural commodity" expands MSPA's coverage to include the planting of pine seedlings and that legislative history demonstrates that Congress intended to protect migrant agricultural workers who plant trees. Weyerhaeuser argues that Bracamontes was not engaged in "agricultural employment" within the meaning of the Act and thus cannot be a "migrant agricultural worker" as the Act defines such a worker in Sec. 1802(8). ¹⁰ Because the Act's legislative history indicates that Congress intended the Act to cover migrants who work on tree farms, we agree with Bracamontes that the third definition in Sec. 1802(3) includes the planting of pine seedlings. The question is a close one and either of the interpretations urged are plausible.

III

We first examine the statute's language, of course. The handling or planting of an "agricultural or horticultural commodity" could be construed in ordinary usage to include the planting of pine seedlings, as well as other forestry labor. ¹¹ We have recognized that agriculture describes a broad activity and that many dictionaries include forestry within the definition of agriculture. ¹² The Department of Labor also has recognized that " 'agriculture' is sometimes used in a broad sense as including the science and art of cultivating forests...." ¹³

The legislative history of the 1974 amendments to FLCRA also indicates that the Act encompasses farm labor contractors in the forestry business. The Senate Report directly addresses such coverage:

The Committee has been informed by the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that some government agencies have permitted the employment of illegal aliens as tree planters, thinners and other forest laborers by awarding contracts to forestry contractors who regularly employ aliens who have illegally entered the United States. The provision of this bill and its penalties are intended to apply to such contractors. ¹⁴

Bracamontes also points us to the House debates on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, in which Congressman Weaver stated, "While forestry is sometimes included in the definition of agriculture, this has been done only in broadly remedial statutes like the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act." ¹⁵

Both the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits have decided that Congress specifically intended that the Act cover farm labor contractors in the forestry business. ¹⁶ "There is little doubt that the 1974 Amendments were intended to apply to forestry contractors who employ 'tree planters, thinners and other forest laborers.' " ¹⁷

Weyerhaeuser argues that this passage in Davis is dictum because the real issue in Davis was the standing under the FLCRA of a competitor of a farm labor contractor to challenge the contractor's noncompliance with the FLCRA. However, as the Bresgal district court noted, the Eleventh Circuit would not have engaged in a lengthy analysis of standing doctrine if it had been convinced that the FLCRA did not cover forestry. ¹⁸ Moreover, contrary to Weyerhaeuser's assertion that Davis did not review the legislative history, the Eleventh Circuit relied on the Senate Report of the 1974 amendments.

Interpreting the Act to cover contractors who hire migrants for forestry work also is consistent with one of the Act's purposes, which is to prevent contractor exploitation of migrant and seasonal laborers, particularly aliens. ¹⁹ Congress described contractor abuse of migrant labor:

It is unfortunately an all too common experience for workers to be abused by farm labor contractors. Testimony revealed that in many cases the contractor: exaggerates conditions of employment when he recruits workers in their home base, or that he fails to inform them of their working conditions at all; transports them in unsafe vehicles; fails to furnish promised housing, or else furnishes substandard and unsanitary housing; operates a company store while making unitemized deductions from workers' paychecks for purchases, and pays the workers in cash without records of units worked or taxes withheld. ²⁰

Forestry laborers are susceptible to similar abuses. ²¹ Thus, the Ninth Circuit concluded that " '[i]t is inconceivable that Congress intended to protect workers planting fruit trees in an orchard, and to disregard workers planting fir trees on a hillside, when both groups suffer from the same clearly identified harm.' " ²²

IV

Weyerhaeuser argues that the 1974 amendments broadened the Act's coverage in only two ways; it expanded coverage to intrastate, as well as interstate, commerce, and also added "coverage for employment involving the processing of agricultural commodities in an unmanufactured state." ²³ Weyerhaeuser thus contends that coverage was expanded vertically to all steps in the production chain of products previously covered by the FLSA and IRC definitions, ²⁴ but not horizontally, to growing operations not previously covered, such as forestry.

Weyerhaeuser also attacks any reliance on the Senate Report's statement about forestry. Weyerhaeuser stresses that the statement should be limited to its context, discussing illegal aliens. But the context is not here so confining. Congress found that illegal aliens comprised a large source of the country's agricultural labor ²⁵ and wanted the Act to cover contractors who hired any migrant labor, not only illegal aliens, for forestry operations.

The vertical expansion of the act is plain, but it is not plain that Congress intended more. The Ninth Circuit concluded that the "handling, planting, [or] drying" mentioned in the third prong all came within the FLSA definition of agriculture. ²⁶ These phrases would be redundant had Congress not meant to deemphasize the activity's location. We also note the similarities between the third prong and Sec. 3121(g)(4)(A) of the IRC. The descriptions of the activities are almost identical. The primary difference is that the third prong drops the restriction that the labor be performed "in the employ of an operator of a farm." We agree that this suggests an intended horizontal reach and did not simply expand coverage to processing--that Congress also intended the Act to cover activities even when not performed on a traditional farm. ²⁷

Weyerhaeuser argues, and the argument has considerable force, that we should defer to DOL's interpretation of the MSPA ²⁸--that forestry workers do not perform agricultural employment within the meaning of the Act, that the third definition, like the IRC and FLSA, excludes forestry. DOL has reasoned that Con...