Investigations recovered more than $2.6M in wages, assessed $1.7M in penalties in 2022
ATLANTA – With a nearly $1 million annual increase in back wages recovered in the Southeast for agricultural industry workers in calendar year 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is continuing its multi-year initiative to educate industry employers about compliance, and workers about their legal protections under federal law.
In addition to the initiative’s compliance outreach and education components, the division will continue its enforcement efforts in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
In 2022, investigators with the division’s Southeast Region identified violations in 85 percent of the approximately 220 completed investigations of agricultural employers. Their reviews found employers owed more than $2.6 million in back wages to nearly 2,900 workers and led the division to assess more than $1.7 million in civil money penalties. The division also debarred seven Southeast growers and farm labor contractors from participation in the H-2A agricultural guest worker program.
“Most agricultural industry workers spend long hours on their feet, exposed to all kinds of weather as they do the hard work needed to put food on our tables, yet they are some of the country’s lowest paid workers,” said Wage and Hour Division Regional Administrator Juan Coria in Atlanta. “When unscrupulous employers try to increase...
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