The Sunnyside company that was found to have systematically discriminated against women employees and engaged in discriminatory practices last year was recently fined $74,642 for violating H-2A visa program requirements, following a U.S. Department of Labor investigation.
Additionally, the department recovered almost $60,000 in unpaid wages for 62 employees working under the temporary visa for agriculture workers. The investigation began August 2021, and penalties were issued June this year. Ostrom has paid the fines.
The owners of Ostrom Mushroom Farms, which have since sold the company to Canadian company Windmill Farms, failed to pay foreign workers the required wage rate under law and did not provide cooking facilities or three meals a day for the employees, as is required under the H-2A, according to a statement from the department’s Wage and Hour Division.
“Our nation depends on agricultural industry workers to feed our families and we are committed to making certain industry employers fulfill their legal responsibilities,” Seattle’s Wage and Hour Division District Director Thomas Silva said in a statement.
Wage theft has been a long-standing problem in the agriculture sector and not necessarily confined to the H-2A program. The department’s Wage and Hour Division handled 879 separate investigations in 2022, recovering more than $5.8 million in back wages for over 8,000 employees in agriculture.
The H-2A program has been heavily criticized by farmworker advocates for...
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