Immigrants sue Warren County employer

Michael Allison, owner of Allison Tree Digging Service, reportedly said he did pay the men correctly and did not fire them.

Allison contracted Daniel Gaona-Gaona, Armando Martinez-Rodriguez, Enrique Torres-Escobedo, Jesus Zarate-Navarro, Francisco Gaona-Sanchez and Sergio Martinez-Rodriguez, all from Mexico, through the U.S. Department of Labor’s H-2A guest worker program, according to the suit.

The program allows some companies to hire foreign workers if they cannot find American workers. Participating companies must pay a specified wage, in this case $8.75 per hour, to ensure they do not use the program to undercut the wages of American workers.

The lawsuit alleges the men were paid only $6.75 an hour and were not reimbursed for the cost of travel in the time required by federal law. Allison fired them without paying them what was due under the guest worker contract because they kept complaining, the suit states.

Allison denies the allegations.

“They sure cashed them checks week after week after week, so they must have felt like they was paid what they were supposed to be,” Allison said. “I think they just got mad, walked off and wanted to get me in trouble.”

Allison said the men have not retrieved checks for some of their hours worked.

Melody Fowler-Green is representing the immigrants as an attorney for Southern Migrant Legal Services. She says the story of her clients is not at all unusual.

“We have talked to hundreds of H-2A workers at dozens of employers in the area, and virtually every one of them has complaints,” Fowler-Green wrote in an e-mail to The Tennessean. “Many of the complaints are similar to the ones alleged in this case. However, 95 percent of the workers we talk to are too afraid to complain.”