Several former employees of Arellano’s Fresh Fruit Market and Restaurant in Covert are suing the farm, and at least six others want to join the lawsuit over unpaid wages. They filed the suit in federal court in Grand Rapids earlier this year according to WOOD-TV, which spoke with a few of the workers and the director of Michigan Migrant Legal Aid about the situation. The allegations that Armando Arellano wasn’t paying his employees what they earned go back at least six years. A mediator has been hired to work the case, but there is also a trial scheduled to start late next year. The farm’s former bookkeeper says Arellano wouldn’t pay the workers properly and threatened them because they were undocumented and working illegally. She says he would tell them they will work for whatever he paid them, and they were to like it.
