Your employer should keep the promises he or she made to you.
If you are an H-2A worker, those promises are made in your H-2A contract and the following information does not apply to you. Click here to read information on the H-2A program.
If you are not an H-2A worker and you are working on a farm (including a Christmas tree farm) or for a forestry company planting trees or clearing brush, at the time you were recruited you should have received written information in your language about the job.
This information should have included:
- when the job was to start and end,
- the place where the job was to be,
- what kind of work you would do,
- how you would be paid for each type of work you would do,
- whether the employer paid for unemployment insurance, and
- what sorts of benefits, such as housing, would be provided and at what cost.
If you did not get this written information, your employer violated a special protective law for farmworkers called the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. Employers are supposed to give you this information in writing before you take the job so that you can make a good decision about whether to travel to take the job.
If your employer does not give you the work, wages or other benefits he promised (either by word of mouth or in writing), you may have a claim under this law.
If your employer knew that the promises he was making to you to get you to take the job were false, you may have another claim under this law.