Migrant Workers Sue Sen. Brent Jackson, His Son, and His Farm for Labor Violations
Former worker José Alberto Aguilera-Hernandez says that Rodney Jackson confronted him on October 27, 2015, demanding that he pay $2,400 to replace a gas pump piece broken during a workplace accident. Aguilera-Hernandez refused, was fired on the spot, and was forced to leave the farm.

Jackson then withheld back wages from the previous week's work. Aguilera-Hernandez, a worker on an H2A visa from Mexico, was forced to solicit help from a local storeowner to get back home. The plaintiffs in the case say that farm employees threatened them to try to get them to drop the lawsuit, and after they went forward, were refused employment. With the way the H2A program works, Farm Labor Organizing Committee spokeswoman Briana Kemp says, the worker has to be formally requested by a grower in order to be brought to work in the U.S.

"I couldn’t believe he would treat another human being this way," Aguilera-Hernandez said in a statement. "He knows I don’t know anyone here and don’t have any way of finding a place to stay or a way home."

The Jackson Farming Company was previously a member of the North Carolina Growers' Association, who has a union contract with FLOC. In 2014, union members filed a grievance against Jackson for "manipulating hours and underpaying workers." According to FLOC, over twenty workers received hundreds of dollars in back pay as a result of that settlement, but Jackson left the NCGA last year, FLOC says, to "avoid further scrutiny from the union, and continue illegal practices."

NC senator seeking money from program he created

Raleigh, N.C. — Sen. Brent Jackson's farming business has applied for a $925,000 grant from a program the Sampson County Republican helped create through a 2013 law he drafted and pitched as a needed economic development tool for rural North Carolina.

According to the Department of Commerce, the direct grant to Jackson's farm would help finance what is estimated to be a $1.7 million project. If the application were approved, it would be the seventh funded by the "Ag Gas" program, and the second largest in terms of public funds awarded.

"I have taken no money," Jackson said Monday, saying he applied for the grant because he had heard other farmers encountered difficulty with the program. "I heard so many folks talking about how hard it was to apply to this program. I decided the best way to find out was to apply and see how it works."

Had he landed the grant, Jackson insisted, he would have declined the money, saying he was surprised during a November Joint Legislative Agriculture Resources Oversight Committee meeting to see his farm on the list of projects that were being considered for the program, which he called "my brainchild." He is a co-chairman of that panel and plays an outsized role in agricultural issues at the legislature due to his status as one of the few working farmers serving in the General Assembly.