Beliz v. W.H. McLeod & Sons Packing Co.

• Citation: 765 F.2d 1317
• Decision Date: 22 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 83-1478,83-1478
• Parties: 27 Wage & Hour Cas. (BN 401, 103 Lab.Cas. P 34,726, 2 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1333 Jose L. BELIZ, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants Cross-Appellees, v. W.H. McLEOD & SONS PACKING COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee Cross-Appellant, Waldo Galan, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Page 1317

765 F.2d 1317

27 Wage & Hour Cas. (BN 401, 103 Lab.Cas. P 34,726,

2 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1333

Jose L. BELIZ, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants Cross-Appellees, v. W.H. McLEOD & SONS PACKING COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee Cross-Appellant, Waldo Galan, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 83-1478.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

July 22, 1985.

William H. Beardall, TX Rural Legal Aid, Inc., Farm Work Div., Hereford, Tex., for Jose L. Beliz, et al.

James A. Williams, Kevin J. Keith, J. Donald Stevenson, Jr., Dallas, Tex., for W.H. McLeod & Sons.

Waldo Galan, pro se.

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

Before THORNBERRY, RUBIN, and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge:

To meet his harvesting needs, a South Carolina farmer engaged a farm labor contractor to recruit migrant workers in Texas and transport them to South Carolina. While the contractor was registered as required by the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, ¹ his registration did not authorize him to transport and house workers, and the contractor committed several other statutory violations while providing the workers to the farmer. The district court found that the farmer did not check the contractor's registration, as the statute required, provided substandard housing for the workers, and did not obtain or maintain statutorily required payroll records. The court rendered judgment in favor of each migrant worker and against the farmer for $200 and against the contractor for $500, for statutory violations, but refused to hold the farmer vicariously liable for the contractor's violations. The court further found that the farmer was not the workers' "employer" under the Fair Labor Standards Act ² and that the workers could not recover unpaid minimum wages from the contractor because they had not proved the number of hours they had worked.

On the workers' appeal, we reverse the judgment in part, for we conclude that the farmer was liable as an employer for wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act and that the workers were not to be faulted for their inability to prove their hours of work. We remand for further proceedings in accordance with that Act. We affirm the judgment in other respects, holding that the amount awarded for the other statutory violations was not so small as to constitute an abuse of the district court's discretion. We dismiss as untimely the farmer's cross appeal asserting lack of in personam jurisdiction.

I.

The case turns on the relationship among Waldo Galan, a registered farm labor contractor who lived in Dimmitt, Texas, W.H. McLeod and Sons Packing Company (McLeod), a South Carolina agricultural producer that grew, harvested, and shipped cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets in Beaufort County, South Carolina, and three families of migrant workers who travelled from Texas to South Carolina in May 1979 to pick crops in McLeod's fields at the solicitation of Galan.

McLeod, a partnership owned and operated by two cousins, W.H. ("Mac") McLeod, Jr. and Claude E. McLeod, Jr., ships vegetables in interstate commerce. The company owns the land on which it grows its vegetables, the farm implements and machinery necessary to the growing operation, and a packing house where the produce is graded, packed, and loaded onto trucks for delivery to market. McLeod directly employs six to eight full-time tractor drivers, an employee to supervise the tractor drivers, and a full-time mechanic. It harvests and packs vegetables in May and June of each year, using a seasonal work force of company employees to operate its packing house during the harvest and packing season. The seasonal harvesting is performed by two, sometimes three, crews of harvest workers. One of these harvest crews consists of local farm workers and additional labor is provided by migrant farm workers.

Galan recruited migrant workers to work on various crops in different seasons. He had travelled to South Carolina with migrant workers to harvest McLeod's crops each spring from 1975 through 1978. He testified that he understood that McLeod counted on him to bring a crew each year unless a particular problem came up. Either Claude or Mac McLeod telephoned Galan from South Carolina early in 1979, asking him to provide at least fifteen pickers for the spring harvest and informing him that the crew would be needed for the entire harvest season. Galan said he had been ill and did not know whether he would be able to do so. Galan later telephoned one of the McLeods and said he would be able to recruit workers. In one of these conversations, McLeod agreed to provide housing for the workers during their stay in South Carolina.

Galan recruited Jose Beliz, who had a wife and seven children, Jose A. Gonzales, who had a wife and ten children, and Juan and Susana Marquez, the families who are plaintiffs in this suit, as well as several other families who are not plaintiffs, in all about forty-five persons. In a later telephone call, perhaps initiated by Galan, Galan told one of the McLeods that he lacked money to transport the workers to South Carolina. McLeod telegraphed $800 to Galan to finance the trip. Galan gave $150 to Jose Beliz, who had an automobile, so that the Beliz family could travel to South Carolina. He used the rest to pay his own and the other workers' transportation expenses. He transported some of the workers in his produce truck, others in his van. Some travelled, like the Beliz family, in their own vehicles.

McLeod planned to house the workers in a building that had once been a motel. Although there was considerable dispute about the condition of the building, the adequacy of the furnishings, the potability of the water, the cleanliness of the outdoor chemical toilets, and other matters, the district court found that the housing "did not meet minimum standards of habitability." It had no beds, stoves, refrigerators, gas or electricity, and no indoor toilets. Moreover, because more people arrived than McLeod had expected, there was not enough room in the building to house all of them. McLeod therefore made a good faith attempt to find and equip additional accommodations. The company rented several trailers, brought beds and mattresses to the motel, and provided additional cooking accommodations. McLeod explained that not only did Galan bring more people than were expected, but that the work parties brought by Galan in prior years consisted mostly of male workers who usually used one cook and a single kitchen. The families who came in 1979, however, wanted separate facilities.

The migrant workers picked tomatoes, cucumbers, beets and squash. This was routine, unskilled work, which consisted of placing the vegetables in buckets and carrying them to Galan's truck where the buckets were dumped into one of sixteen produce bins carried on the truck and furnished by McLeod. When the bins were full, the driver, who had travelled to South Carolina with Galan and his wife, drove the truck to McLeod's packing shed where the bins were emptied. Workers were paid by the bucket for tomatoes (30cents), cucumbers (30cents) and squash (30cents) and by the bundle for beets (25cents). Several workers testified that their work was made less productive because the crop was meager and it took longer to fill a bucket than it would have taken had the crop been bountiful. In addition they testified that there was a good deal of rain and, although they did not pick crops in the rain, when they returned to the fields picking was retarded by the dampness. No effort was made by either Galan or McLeod to keep any record of days or hours worked by anyone, total pay per hour, or the relationship of the pay received to the minimum wage.

Mac McLeod generally stayed in the fields to supervise the harvest work. He directed whether or not the Texas crew would work on any given day, decided daily which field was ready for harvest, and specified the fields in which the crew would work and the order in which it would work them. He determined throughout the course of each day when to move the crew from one field to another or from picking one crop to picking another. He sought to make sure that the crews did not skip any fields or fall behind in their work. He checked the bins to make sure the workers were picking the correct size produce and were filling the bins to the top. He told the crewleader, Galan, who in turn told the workers, what size produce to pick and gave instructions on how to harvest those crops that the crew did not already know how to harvest. If he saw a worker damaging vines, he told the crewleader to warn the worker. He had authority, although he did not find it necessary to exercise it, to instruct the crewleader to fire an individual worker if the worker persisted in doing the job improperly or to lay off any worker who appeared to be of school age if he thought the worker should be in school.

Galan directly supervised the field work and did not himself pick crops. He sometimes drove the truck picking up the harvest and he also transported workers to and from work and to and from other places in South Carolina from time to time. Although Mac McLeod testified that it was up to Galan to fix the rates paid the workers, the workers complained about the rate to McLeod on at least one occasion and Galan testified that McLeod was "pretty much the one who sets the prices that you pay per bucket," although Galan later indicated that he set the per-bucket rate. While Galan was in South Carolina McLeod advanced funds to him to buy tires and a battery for his truck and McLeod's mechanic repaired the truck when needed, without charge to Galan.

At the end of each week, McLeod prepared work sheets showing the number of bins of produce picked and the amount due Galan. Those sheets showed the rate per bin and also the rate per bucket. Although the workers were actually paid 30cents per bucket for tomatoes, these sheets showed...