WA mushroom farm ordered to pay $3.4 million for discriminating against female workers

A little more than a year ago, a mushroom farm in Eastern Washington put a job posting on Facebook, looking for only male workers. The post was made by a lead employee of what was then Ostrom Mushroom Farms in Sunnyside. Now, the farm has been ordered to pay $3.4 million to settle allegations of discrimination against 170 female farmworkers it fired, apparently because of their sex.

The Washington state attorney general's office says farm management at Ostrom believed their female workers had child-care obligations and could not work late hours or on weekends.

From April 2021 to April 2022 the farm laid off a portion of its female employees and replaced them with male H-2A visa workers.

The attorney general's office sued the company for misuse of the H-2A visa program, which is intended to allow companies to hire migrant workers only when there's a shortage of domestic workers.

Many of the fired employees live minutes away from the farm.

One of those former employees, Daniela Barajas, said when the farm first moved to Sunnyside people were excited because of its proximity to their homes. But then the layoffs started.