A California-based labor contracting company that was ordered to pay millions in a discrimination and human trafficking lawsuit in Hawaii has been smacked in a similar case in Washington state.
A federal judge in Washington ordered Global Horizons Inc. to pay $7.6 million for allowing Thai farmworkers to face a hostile work environment, harassment and discrimination in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Edward F. Shea found the company’s conduct “reprehensible” for subjecting the laborers to “fear, anxiety, anger, intimidation, humiliation and shame, and … an unrelenting sense of imprisonment.”
In Hawaii a federal judge in December 2014 held Global Horizons liable for $8.7 million for allowing Thai farmworkers to face similar conditions.
Maui Pineapple Co.
was held jointly liable for $8.1 million out of the
$8.7 million in compensatory and punitive damages because 54 of the 82 Hawaii laborers worked at Maui Pineapple through Global Horizons.
The EEOC had also settled for $3.6 million with five other farms considered accomplices in the case: Del Monte Farm Produce, Mac Farms of Hawaii, Kauai Coffee Co., Kelena Farms and Captain Cook Coffee Co.
Investigators said Global Horizons recruited impoverished Thai nationals to work at the farms, enticing them with high wages and steady work. The laborers were promised working conditions that complied with U.S. laws but instead faced humiliation, harassment and intimidation by their handlers, officials said.
In Washington the commission filed suit against Global Horizons and two farms in 2011, charging a similar pattern of discrimination, harassment and retaliation against Thai farmworkers.
Whether the workers ever collect full payment is uncertain.
In the Hawaii case in November 2013, Global Horizons owner Mordechai Orian said his company was no longer in business and that he would not agree to any monetary settlement.
The federal government had also charged Orian, six former Global Horizons employees and a Thai labor recruiter with forced labor and other crimes involving 600 imported Thai farmworkers between 2001 and 2007. The federal court case in Honolulu was said to be the largest human-trafficking case ever prosecuted in the United States, but the government later dropped it after determining it was unlikely to prevail in proving the charges.
Michael Green, Orian’s Hawaii lawyer in both the civil and criminal litigation, had said Orian lost everything defending himself.
