By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — A Lonoke County farmer has settled a lawsuit in which four migrant workers claimed mistreatment while participating in a guest worker program.

The attorney for the workers did not disclosed a dollar amount but said the settlement covered the workers’ work, travel and pain and suffering.

“We hope this settlement sends a message to the growers that if you are going to compete unfairly and use the guest worker program but not follow its rules there are consequences,” said Sarah Donaldson, an attorney with the Nashville, Tenn.-based Southern Migrant Legal Services, which filed the lawsuit in May in U.S. District Court in Little Rock.

Odom did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday.

The lawsuit alleged labor trafficking and abuse by Jack Odom, doing business as Odom Farms in Austin, against four Mexicans brought to the United States under a federal guest worker program which allows employees to hire foreign workers if sufficient domestic labor cannot be found.

According to the lawsuit, the four were forced to live in deplorable conditions, their passports were confiscated and they were not paid what they were promised.

When the lawsuit was filed, Odom said there was “no legitimacy to these complaints.”
At the time, he said one of the four workers was fired last year because he was caught smoking marijuana, and that the other three were not invited back to work this year because of poor performance.

Odom also said the workers lived in housing inspected by federal authorities and that their passports were taken away to keep them safe because workers had had passports stolen in previous years.

The four worked on Odom’s farm in 2006, 2007 and 2008.