DOJ hits Smithfield unit with record fine on hiring practices
By Rita Jane Gabbett on 8/23/2011
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that Smithfield Food's Farmland Foods Inc. unit agreed to pay $290,400 to settle allegations that it engaged in a pattern of discrimination by imposing unnecessary and excessive documentary requirements on non-U.S. citizens and foreign-born U.S. citizens when establishing their authority to work in the United States.
The agreed amount is the highest civil penalty paid through settlement since enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act's anti-discrimination provision in 1986, according to DOJ.
Farmland also agreed to end its impermissible document requests and to modify its employment eligibility verification process as well as to new monitoring and reporting provisions and training for its human resources personnel.
The settlement resolves the lawsuit between the United States and Farmland filed in June 2011.
The lawsuit was based on an investigation by the Civil Rights Division's Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) that revealed Farmland required all newly hired non-U.S. citizens and some foreign-born U.S. citizens at its Monmouth, Ill., plant to present specific and, in many cases, extra work-authorization documents beyond those required by federal law.
In the case of non-U.S. citizens, Farmland required the presentation of a specific work-authorization document issued by the Department of Homeland Security, such as a permanent resident card or an employment authorization document, rather than allowing the employee to choose which document(s) to present from the list of acceptable documents on the Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9.
Farmland also required additional work authorization documents, generally by requiring social security cards after employees had produced other documents establishing work authority.
In the case of foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizens, Farmland sometimes required evidence of citizenship, such as certificates of naturalization or U.S. passports, even when those individuals had other means of proving their work authority.
A Farmland Foods spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment on the settlement.
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