Migrant Workers 2 of 2

Thank. You. You know I know what it's like right. Now. OK let me read this.

My friend called me up. Told me that he told me to take my sighting I think and some of this room and that's all. The favorite. That'll be.

Good when I go to bed I think they're kind of home but I want to thank them for someone else. It's just because he's got a broken down by OK and broke right. OK ask him how this is screwing us both got to the form this morning and the moment. You brought them to form their homes were to pick them up. Hello Philadelphia.

All day he stayed on the farm he didn't get into any of the flack that he had to do anything at all. We just understand the employee. Turnover. Rate.

Good. Morning they are here in New Jersey. We do have some communication. We're talking this young

man is quite well. Graduate from high school. And there. You can find out if people are. Basically right. Vehicles are registered here with the state. We register them as we register their careers at the water rights to use the vehicle. Before the authorizing use it has to be inspected. So all these buses are. Then once again. A quick check is made here by the vehicle off of the state police officers to see if there's any obvious violations broken headlights or something like that if the driver is a licensed vehicle parked on the register.

OK then again forgetting the luminary information finding out a contractor does have his license with him if he has these posters which I have here are display and give the necessary information such as the minimum wage workers title to earn in a day. And are also interested of course surance of the vehicle is properly insured which is also part of the what's necessary to obtain a computer registration license of this size. For example. Dr. Kerry $500000 that is half a million liability insurance to cover any accident or injury to passengers he has. I'm looking forward. To see if the crew work or the head person is distributing the wages right. He gets the song to his people. Yeah that's correct. In other words we will check and see that the people

have received their wages their receipt of money and try to determine if in fact they have received a wage which meets or exceeds a minimum wage. And a payroll tax. I believe mainly they're doing a wage check further up the road there. What we're doing here as I said the preliminary information and there may actually interviewing the people further up the road now they have found some violation. Since I've been down the same here I haven't determined yet exactly how many they found. Only when trying to use our power from labor specialists and he runs this kind of operation where we participate like there's about eight of these that the state does every year and I like other agencies including our waking hours and what they do is that they respect the process to see if they need the certification requires registration safety requirements none. If they find that

there are reason to indicate that there are potential violations they may powered up by visiting a farm like the next day. Perhaps you could fill out all of it not it was really a question you are asking. Right. OK yes they. Are saying that there is. It's great. You know. Are you. OK. We don't really get involved in the wage aspect of it right here. Basically we're checking to make sure that the crew leader is registered as a foreign labor contractor and he's driving a bus that he's authorized to drive is authorized to transport the vehicle has been authorized also which means it's been checked for safety. Safety inspections been done on it and we don't get too involved in the wages at all this point. Down why you know. OK basically because under the federal minimum wage law day haul workers are exempt from the minimum wage. So

only in the rocks and under the state right. The New Jersey the real estate New Jersey requires even earn the minimum wage even if they're working the piece work rates. Our regulations have an exemption for day her labor that is people which most of these buses are coming in from for the same day for one day. It's transit just coming in. They're not the true migrant like coming up from Mexico or or Florida. And so since we have an exemption from minimum wage we don't examine whether that they get paid minimum wage or not because they're exempt from all laws but they're not exempt from the state law so the state looks for are just about the same things that we look for except they also check on minimum wage and they also check rather such things as whether or not they got paid on the farm where we don't have that requirement as part of our laws that we have been reckoned cooperation with the state and

these things for a number of years since about what 1975 or so. And we're really here as their guest this is their show and their operation. You got 10 agencies involved including us and then we have other cooperative enforcement efforts where we go together on teams on the farms we've done surveys together with the state on a farm and this is just one of those operations where we are doing a cooperative enforcement effort with the state of New Jersey. Where. We are. Yeah the entire rest of the season the leads that we get from a road check such as this if it indicates any violations we follow it up by visiting a farm that they worked on in the very near future either tomorrow or next week and again interview people on the crew we have to verify they are in fact working on a farm which technically they're not employed Nagra culture when you hear an RO check which. Is a form of getting leads for us to follow up on it for us. We inspect the vehicles as far as whether tires are bald and they have brake

lights etc.. Although we're not we don't get onto the bus to make sure they exhaust the steering or proper working order. We don't inspect. We don't have requirements such as a state that their bathroom facilities on the form of things like that we don't hear about. Now we don't do housing unless it's housing that's either our own or operated by a by a crew leader and not the leader owned or operated then we don't we don't have any thought of to inspect it. There are other federal agencies such as Occupational Safety and Health that do such inspections under state of course does a great number of the pre occupancy inspections I think they probably have done in excess of 350 so far this year just pre-occupied 6 and about how many violations of your of your tally so far this week because you know we've visited about 20 former This week up with about. Say 50 different types of violations on the forms. One crew leader may have three of several different types of violations but on

top of that if you're going to put it in a clearing in the 50s. Yeah that's not a violation. One for Ronald one for very little. Maybe even more you know your when considering one crueler can have many multiple violations. You may not have the culture on a bus. You may not be properly registered You may not be authorized to transport vehicle may be considered unsafe by our standards. Things like that and that's just the beginning of the season for us. We'll be going out and traumas and teams on another inspections and you're probably on schedule for about another rotten run in round numbers about another thousand man hours of inspection time investigation time to clean out and perhaps the beginning of September with different crews of people coming out of the Trenton area office to write today. We probably have six or seven compliance officers here today that will have them spread out between now and under season two or three per week

until we use up a clock in another thousand hours. And that's our program for farms correction.