JEFFERSON, Maine — A Lincoln County farmer must pay $120,000 to compensate female seasonal workers sexually harassed for years by male supervisors, according to a consent decree approved in federal district court in Portland last week.
The Equal Employment Commission this week announced the terms of the four-year consent decree resolving discrimination litigation it brought against County Fair Farm of Jefferson.
The farm is owned by Susan and Andrew Williamson, who are named as the defendants in the federal ruling.
Messages left for County Fair Farm were not returned.
The EEOC, the federal agency charged with enforcing employment laws protecting workers from discrimination, sued County Fair Farm in October 2014, saying the farm had created and maintained a sexually hostile work environment for female farm workers since 2003.
Under the terms of the consent decree, in addition to establishing the $120,000 fund to compensate an unspecified number of victims, County Fair Farm will no longer employ the alleged perpetrators of the sexual harassment.
The compensation fund will be set up as an interest-bearing escrow account with payments distributed to the claimants by the EEOC, which expects the Williamsons to cooperate in identifying and locating any other victims by “providing other information requested by the EEOC.”
According to the consent decree, the farm’s owners have also agreed to enact for the first time policies and procedures to prevent sexual harassment and retaliation.
The decree also requires the farm to post anti-discrimination notices in English and Spanish and to provide training to employees to prevent sexual harassment and ensure workers are aware of their right to work in an environment free from unlawful discrimination in the future.
“All employers need to post [these] signs in visible places for the workers to see,” said Michael Rojas, EEOC program analyst. “What was found in [this] investigation was that some of the signs were not posted in visible areas [so] we put into the decree that training needs to take place so those signs are put in visible areas and that employees are made aware of their rights.”
County Fair Farm allegedly violated federal law by creating and maintaining a sexually hostile work environment for female farmworkers beginning in 2003, according to the complaint. The lawsuit was filed after conciliation efforts between the agency and the farm owners failed to reach an agreement acceptable to the EEOC.
Aurora Del Rosario Clemente Arpaiz filed a complaint with the commission that said she worked for the farm during the growing seasons from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2012, according to the document filed in federal court in Portland.
She and other female workers allegedly were propositioned repeatedly for sex and subjected to lewd comments about their bodies by their supervisors and male co-workers while working at the farm.
During the 2012 growing season, Arpaiz lived in a trailer on the farm, the complaint said. At night her supervisor often would stand or sit outside the door and stare. She would lock herself inside, refusing to let him in and afraid to leave the trailer.
After she complained to the farm owners during the 2012 growing season, the harassment by her male co-workers and her supervisor increased, the complaint said. She was fired in November 2012 when she told the owners that “she could not take the harassment any longer.”
Farm owners denied the allegations, saying the charges had no validity.
“We don’t operate that kind of operation here at all,” Andrew Williamson told the BDN in 2014. “The complaint [to the EEOC] was filed by two or three people out of the hundreds who have worked here. That isn’t how things are here. What they do on their own private time is their business.”
Seasonal and migrant workers are often targets of sexual and unlawful harassment, according to EEOC trial attorney Sara Smolik.
“Unfortunately, many migrant workers suffer unlawful harassment and retaliation in silence, afraid of jeopardizing their jobs and their ability to provide for themselves and their families,” Smolik said. “We commend the lead claimant for the bravery she demonstrated by filing the discrimination charge with EEOC [because it] not only alerted us to long-standing abuse in this workplace, but led to this resolution, which requires County Fair Farm to put a stop to this misconduct.”
