The Worker Justice Center of New York has filed a complaint in U.S. District Court seeking class action status on behalf of former employees of A.J. Piedimonte Agricultural Development, LLC and related companies owned and operated by Anthony Piedimonte in Orleans County, New York.
Since at least 2012, the Piedimonte business, a large-scale agricultural and produce packing, storage and distribution enterprise, has flagrantly violated the rights of hundreds of its migrant and seasonal workers, failing to pay them even the required minimum wage under federal and state law and uniformly denying overtime pay to workers who labored sometimes more than seventy hours in a week. At the same time, Piedimonte has increasingly sought to import foreign laborers under the federal H-2A foreign guestworker program, replacing local and domestic U.S. workers with temporary visa-holders whose presence, mobility and activities are tightly controlled by Piedimonte.