Jul 24, 2012

Women farm workers win sex harassment case

While picking tomatoes for DiMare Ruskin, one of Florida’s largest growers, Catalina Ramirez says her crew leader would repeatedly ask her for sex, according to a lawsuit.

In the same Immokalee fields, Lucia Reyes says she was groped and sexually taunted by her male co-workers, according to the suit.

Both ended up without work. And both ended up filing complaints of sexual harassment with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The EEOC sued DiMare last year in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. This week, the EEOC announced that the company — affiliated with DiMare Fresh, which has fields from Homestead to California — will pay a $150,000 settlement. The Miami Herald

Read more of the story here.

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