Owner of Wisconsin Timber Company Fined for Back Wages and Civil Penalties

Monday, January 23rd, 2023 -- 12:01 PM

(By Rich Kremer, Wisconsin Public Radio) The owners of a Wisconsin timber company who lied to workers from Mexico and Central America about where they would work and how much they would earn must pay more than $1 million in back wages and civil penalties. 

According to Rich Kremer with Wisconsin Public Radio, Alfredo Aguilar, who co-owns Northwoods Forestry, Inc. with his wife Patricia Aguilar, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Madison.

The plea agreement states that between 2015 and the end of 2018, Aguilar recruited workers from Mexico and Central America through the federal H-2B visa program. Aguilar made statements to the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that the recruits would work in forestry jobs in Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

Instead, those workers were placed in meat packing, construction, roofing, agriculture and landscaping jobs. Aguilar admitted he told the H-2B workers they could legally work in those fields when he knew that wasn't true.

Aguilar also admitted that Northwoods Forestry paid less than prevailing wage rates, did not pay overtime and illegally deducted charges for transportation and safety equipment from workers' wages. 

U.S. Department of Labor District Director of the Wages and Hour Division, Kristen Tout, told Wisconsin Public Radio there were discrepancies between the wages promised in federal H2B filings and those workers ultimately received.

"In the course of hiring and in paying these workers who arrived with their H-2B visa to perform Forest Service work, there's a potential then that they would be shortcutting them for the work they actually performed," Tout said.

The Department of Labor investigation also focused on A&C Forestry Services LLC in Eau Claire, which is owned by an employee of Northwoods Forestry. A&C Forestry Services also placed foreign workers, recruited by Aguilar, in non-forestry related jobs.

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