Western Growers has filed an amicus brief in The Wildwood Group, Inc., et al. v. Vista Santa Rosa, Inc., et al., now before California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two. Drafted by Senior Vice President and General Counsel Jason Resnick, the brief urges the court to uphold a Riverside County Superior Court judgment in favor of agricultural employers.
The dispute involves the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), farm labor contractor Vista Santa Rosa, Inc., and several growers. It concerns whether intermittent breaks in agricultural work constitute a discharge requiring immediate payment of final wages and potentially triggering waiting-time penalties.
Vista’s employees performed various agricultural tasks, and many returned season after season. Following trial, the superior court found that DLSE had failed to prove the workers were hired solely for a particular grape harvest. Instead, they were hired for an indefinite period to perform agricultural work as needed. The court rejected DLSE’s position and entered judgment for the employers.
On appeal, DLSE argues that a seasonal layoff constitutes a discharge unless workers receive a definite return date within the same weekly pay period. Western Growers’ brief challenges that approach, explaining that Labor Code section 205 requires weekly pay during ongoing farm labor contractor employment, while sections 201 and 202 govern final pay when employment ends.
Growers cannot always predict when the next field will be ready or when weather will allow crews to return. Treating each break as a termination could expose contractors and growers to penalties even when employees remain part of an ongoing seasonal workforce and receive their wages on the regular weekly payday. The brief asks the court to preserve the distinction between a pause in work and the end of employment.
The brief warns that growers “cannot operate under a rule that retroactively converts ordinary agricultural pauses into discharges whenever the next assignment was not scheduled within one week.”
Attorneys for the employer parties include Bruce Carroll; Howard A. Sagaser, Michael J. Conway II and Ian B. Wieland of Sagaser, Watkins & Wieland, PC; and Michael I. Kim of CKB Vienna LLP.