Lawsuit: Western sheep operators colluded against workers

Two former shepherds from Peru are accusing key players in the sheep industry in the western U.S. of conspiring to keep wages low for foreign workers. Rodolfo Llacua and Esliper Huaman, represented by a Denver law firm called Towards Justice, are seeking to have their lawsuit treated as a class-action case seeking damages for current and former shepherds across the West. The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District court in Denver, targets the Salt Lake City-based Western Range Association and Casper, Wyoming-based Mountain Plains Agricultural Service. The companies place foreign workers with sheep operations.  "The amount they paid us never seemed right," Huaman said in a statement released by his lawyers. "Many fellow shepherds are still suffering under these low wages, and I hope that I can help benefit them through this complaint." Llacua and Huaman say in their lawsuit that the Western Range Association and Mountain Plains Agricultural Service, as well as ranchers who hire foreign workers through them, violated anti-trust laws by colluding to keep wages at the minimum levels required by the federal government. "We think that people working as shepherds should be fairly compensated, pursuant to regular market forces," said Nina DiSalvo, executive director of Towards Justice. Huaman is now working in Utah, while Llacua is in Colorado, she said. Stung into action recently by an earlier lawsuit brought by U.S. sheepherders who claimed the foreign worker program was keeping wages artificially low, the U.S. Department of Labor early this year proposed a new rule that would ramp up pay for the herders up to $2,400 a month by 2020...more