Attorney General Keith Ellison is suing Evergreen Acres’ owners, Keith Schaefer and his daughter Megan Hill, for allegedly taking over $3 million in pay from hundreds of employees while billing them for dismal living accommodations in barns and garages. The lawsuit compares Evergreen Acres’ working conditions to Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” with employees working 12-hour days six or seven days a week and being charged rent to sleep in the same bed as others doing opposite 12-hour stints.
Schaefer and Hill reject almost everything in the lawsuit, including the fact that many of their employees are undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico. They acknowledge to employing hundreds of workers over the last three years, many of whom were recruited from Mexico by present staff. They also deny consistently underpaying workers by up to 32 hours every two weeks and neglecting to pay overtime payments.
Ellison’s office claims that the accommodation workers were charged $70-$150 every two weeks was not appropriate for human habitation, and that Evergreen managers conducted unannounced inspections and withheld money from workers’ salaries for unclean quarters.
Dairy farms are among the most hazardous workplaces in the nation, since they depend on foreign labor and get minimal regulatory control. Ellison accused Evergreen Acres of abusing workers’ infirmities, claiming that many are from the Oaxaca area and speak Zapotec as their first language and Spanish as a second. Workers are required to do “physically demanding tasks that run the risk of death and serious injury.”
