Calderon v. Witvoet
| Decision Date | 16 July 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-3231,92-3231 |
| Citation | 999 F.2d 1101 |
| Parties | , 126 Lab.Cas. P 33,001, 26 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1494, 1 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 872 Crispin CALDERON, et al., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Jim WITVOET, Sr., et al., doing business as J & B Vegetables, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Vincent H. Beckman (argued), Jean Agathen, Blair Craddock, Pasquale Lombardo, Susan Compernolle, Legal Assistance Foundation, Chicago, IL, for plaintiffs-appellees.
Christopher W. Bohlen (argued), Blanke, Norden, Barmann, Kramer & Bohlen, Kankakee, IL, for defendants-appellants.
Before BAUER, Chief Judge, and CUMMINGS and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.
Vegetable farmers in central Illinois employed migrant labor without following the standards established by the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act of 1983 (AWPA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1801-72. The principal question on this appeal is whether the Witvoet family is entitled to the exemption that § 4(a)(1) of the AWPA, 29 U.S.C. § 1803(a)(1), provides for family farms. The district judge held that it is not, as a matter of law, 764 F.Supp. 536 (C.D.Ill.1991), and directed the Witvoets to pay damages and comply with the statute in future years. Other questions, concerning Social Security taxes, minimum wages, damages, and the statute of limitations also were resolved uniformly in plaintiffs' favor, some by summary judgment and some after a bench trial.
Jim Witvoet, Sr., and his wife Beverly run a farm called J & B Vegetables. The farm depends on seasonal labor. During the years in question the Witvoets employed approximately 35 workers per growing season. Not all of the workers stayed from planting through harvest, but the average complement made the Witvoets' operation too big to qualify for the "small business" exemption from the AWPA and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which use the same criteria. 29 U.S.C. § 1803(a)(2), incorporating 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(6)(A). Thus the Witvoets had to comply with the AWPA unless they ran a family farm. Section 4(a)(1) includes, among the list of "persons ... not subject to this chapter":
Any individual who engages in a farm labor contracting activity on behalf of a farm ... which is owned or operated exclusively by such individual or an immediate family member of such individual, if such activities are performed only for such operation and exclusively by such individual or an immediate family member, but without regard to whether such individual has incorporated or otherwise organized for business purposes.
Mr. and Mrs. Witvoet say that they are the sole owners of J & B Vegetables. They operate the farm with the aid of their son Jim Witvoet, Jr., an "immediate family member". The catch is the provision that the "farm labor contracting activity" must be performed "exclusively" by the family.
The term "farm labor contracting activity" means recruiting, soliciting, hiring, employing, furnishing, or transporting any migrant or seasonal agricultural worker.
Section 3(6), 29 U.S.C. § 1802(6). Thus the family owning the farm need not plant or harvest the crops, but the family must carry out all "recruiting, soliciting, hiring, employing, furnishing, or transporting any migrant or seasonal agricultural worker."
According to the district court, the Witvoets flunk the statutory test because they are not the exclusive sources of transportation. What does it mean to say in § 3(6) that "farm labor contracting activity" means "transporting" a migrant worker? Taken to an extreme, this could mean that the farm's owner must drive his own car hither and yon throughout North America, picking up the migrant workers and driving them back to the farm. Letting an airline or railroad bear the worker from one state to another would mean that the owner had not been the "exclusive" supplier of transportation. But this reading would make § 4(a)(1) a statutory mirage. Migrant workers use their own cars or common carriers to move from one farm to another. Once on the farm, they ride other contraptions. They might, for example, drive tractors or sit in the cab of a truck full of vegetables on the way to market. Again "transporting" must mean something short of all movement, or we have obliterated the exemption.
Plaintiffs, however, have no desire to preserve the family farm exemption. At oral argument counsel told us that if a single migrant worker rides one yard on a tractor, driven by himself or anyone other than a member of the family, the exemption is destroyed. The tractor transports the worker, and unless the family is "exclusively" responsible for transportation, bye bye exemption. A variant of this argument persuaded the district court. The workers do not spend 24 hours a day in the fields. Twice a day, at least, they must move between their housing and the beets or carrots. Those who have their own cars may offer rides to their friends. The rest use the Witvoets' vehicles. A few drive in the farm's trucks. The Witvoets furnish a small bus (seating 15-20 passengers) that crew leaders often use to carry workers. Head crew leader Salomon Calderon regularly drove workers to the nearest town to buy food; he used "one of the trucks that belong to the boss." The district court held that the Witvoets lost their entitlement to the family farm exemption because they do not drive the bus, trucks, and cars themselves. Another district judge reached the same conclusion under a predecessor to the AWPA. Marshall v. Buntings' Nurseries, Inc., 459 F.Supp. 92, 97 (D.Md.1978). There are no appellate decisions on the question.
The district court's approach, no less than the possibilities with which we began this discussion, eviscerates the family farm exemption. Only a farm of modest size (requiring more than 500 man-days of agricultural labor) seeks shelter in § 4(a)(1); smaller farms elect the small business exemption of § 4(a)(2). A farm large enough to use 500 man-days of hired help, concentrated in the planting and harvest seasons, is too large for the owner to do all the driving. Even a farmer who tried to drive every truck, van, and tractor would be foiled. Sooner or later, a worker is bound to use his own car or hop aboard a tractor--or the crew chief will drive another worker into town to buy groceries.
Some statutes are self destructive, imposing restrictions so severe that no one qualifies for the favor or incurs the penalty. See Continental Can Co. v. Chicago Truck Drivers Pension Fund, 916 F.2d 1154 (7th Cir.1990). Courts do not blot statutes from the books when alternatives are available, however. It is possible but hardly inevitable to read "transporting" as all movement provided or suffered by the owner. Words do not have natural meanings; their scope depends on their context. Deal v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ----, 113 S.Ct. 1993, 1996, 124 L.Ed.2d 44 (1993); Concast, Inc. v. AMCA Systems, Inc., 959 F.2d 631 (7th Cir.1992). Recall the language of § 3(6): "The term 'farm labor contracting activity' means recruiting, soliciting, hiring, employing, furnishing, or transporting any migrant or seasonal agricultural worker." This definition collects a number of contractual endeavors: making a contract of employment ("hiring"), maintaining a worker in the labor force ("employing"), preparing to do these things ("recruiting" and "soliciting"), and doing them for others ("furnishing"). The final term in this sequence, "transporting", can be understood as still another contractual activity obtaining and paying for a ticket that brings the worker to the farm or sends him on to the next one. So understood, "farm labor contracting activity" covers the hiring and management of workers, the subject collectively called labor relations. This is consistent not only with principles for deriving meaning, see David L. Shapiro, Continuity and Change in Statutory Interpretation, 67 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 921, 929-31, 947-50 (1992), but also with the understanding conveyed by § 4(a)(1): that one may run a "family farm" as a manager, without tilling the fields or playing chauffeur to the hired help.
Nothing in the legislative history of § 3(6) or § 4(a)(1) suggests that "transporting" refers to the movement that is inevitable during the course of employment. The Department of Labor has not issued a regulation defining the terms in § 3(6). Another part of the statute, however, deals with vehicles. Section 401, 29 U.S.C. § 1841, requires farms covered by the AWPA to use safe vehicles, operated in a proper manner. Section 401 uses the word "transportation" to refer to all movement in and around the farm; the section is drafted so broadly that Congress thought it necessary to exclude "the transportation of any migrant or seasonal agricultural worker on a tractor, combine, harvester, picker, or other similar machinery ... while such worker is actually engaged in the planting, cultivating, or harvesting of any agricultural commodity". 29 U.S.C. § 1841(a)(2). Plaintiffs ask us to infer that "transporting" throughout the Act has this comprehensive scope. "Transportation" in § 401 includes driving the vans used to move workers between housing and the fields. See also 29 C.F.R. § 500.101(a) (). If the word means the same in § 3(6), the Witvoets lose the exemption--for bus, van, car, and tractor all are "transportation." (The exemption in § 401(a)(2) does not apply to the definition of "farm labor contracting activity" in § 3(6); neither does the regulatory exemption in 29 C.F.R. § 500.103(c) for the workers' carpools.)
Once more, however, plaintiffs' argument depends on divorcing "transporting" in § 3(6) from its context. Section 401 applies only to covered...
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