Fruit Industry Allegations

Fruit Industry Allegations. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The case of the Evans Fruit lawsuit is rippling through the industry. For those that don’t know, a foreman for Evan’s Fruit was charged in an alleged assault on a female worker. The foreman was let go and the lawsuit against Evan’s was dismissed. Recently the ag industry has come under fire that these acts happen more frequently and Dan Fazio with Washington Farm Labor says that’s not true.

FAZIO: There’s absolutely no proof that sexual assault or harassment occurs more frequently in agriculture than in construction, retail, military or any other industry. But that being said we take all these kinds of reports as constructive criticism and there’s no question that agriculture has got to put systems in place.

A recent article by the Center for Investigative Reporting has highlighted some of these incidents.

FAZIO: The report does illustrate how tough these cases are. They’re almost always he said/she said case. We tell employers to call the police immediately is there are accusations such as those reported in the article. The law enforcement a lot of times are going to say you know we don’t see it that way. We don’t see that there was an assault here.

Regardless of the industry these are always tough cases to prove unless there is an actual crime committed as in a case of rape. Fazio says what wasn’t in the article are cases where a poor performing employee gets demoted or is not promoted and uses a sexual harassment claim as retaliation. All the while you have to temper this with actual cases of provable sexual harassment or assaults which do happen in any business.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.