Three South African workers filed a lawsuit against Minnesota company Boehnke Waste Handling LLC, seeking what they claim to be unpaid minimum and overtime wages, damages, and penalties, citing the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to reports, Boehnke Waste Handling pumps, transports, and spreads livestock manure onto crop fields as fertilizer. The company employs foreign workers through the federal H-2A visa program, which requires suitable housing, safe working conditions, travel reimbursement, and minimum wage for farmworkers.
While Boehnke’s pay rates reported reflected a minimum wage of $15.37 per hour in 2022 and $17.34 in 2023, the lawsuit filed Friday alleges that the three workers, employed at various times during three years, were not compensated fairly for their time spent traveling to and from remote worksites.
The suit also states that during their employment, the plaintiffs routinely worked more than 40 hours per week, but their employer did not pay overtime wages for all the overtime hours worked.
The workers allege that their housing included rooms in the defendant’s machine shop that were exposure to manure and machine fumes but didn’t have windows. It also said that when two of them brought their concerns to their employer, they claim that Boehnke terminated their employment in retaliation before the end of their work contracts.
Boehnke Waste Handling is seeking 17 visa workers for farm-related work, encompassing the removal, pumping, application, and treatment of manure, alongside equipment maintenance and repairs. This opportunity was outlined in a January job description on the Department of Labor’s website.
However, the lawsuit notes that although the employer is supposedly listed as a fixed site employer on H-2A applications during 2021-2023, Boehnke Waste Handling primarily operated as an H-2A labor contractor, who furnished the plaintiffs for a fee to complete various duties at farms and ranches in the surrounding area.
Workers also claim that as a large part of their work, they handled manure and equipment specified for hauling manure, which included handling hazardous waste and working around “lagoons” as part of the work they completed. Plaintiffs insisted was not part of their outlined farm duties and placed them in hazardous situations completing work not outlined in their contracts.
In 2022, Purdue University researchers documented eight deaths related to manure storage and handling. Many of these incidents occurred during the repair of manure-handling equipment.
Multiple news outlets have reached out to Boehnke Waste Handling for comment, but the company has not responded to those requests nor has it made any public statements about the lawsuit.
The workers are represented by attorneys at the Agricultural Worker Project of Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, a legal aid organization.