The verdict allows more than 3, 000 workers to recover back wages and penalties. The reimbursement could become the biggest award of its kind since the California Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that workers must get paid for compulsory travel time. Castroville-based Sea Mist Farms, the nation's largest artichoke producer, was ordered last year to pay 37 workers more than $181,000 in travel time from 1997 to 2001.

The class-action case, whose members were primarily Mexican immigrants who earned between $11,000 and $16,000 per year, hinged on whether D'Arrigo compensated workers for half-hour commutes in company vans between a Salinas parking lot and farms throughout the Salinas valley. Workers had to arrive at the parking lot by 6 a.m., then take vans to fields 10 or 15 miles away, resulting in 25 to 50 minutes each way when they were under D'Arrigo's watch, but not getting paid. Rural workers who lived near the fields questioned why they couldn't simply arrive for work in the fields and park on the side of the road.

"I don't have a specific idea why they required this, but the result was that they didn't respect our time," said Alejandro Garcia, 39, who has cut and packed mixed lettuce for nine years. "We're the ones making the company rich, and they need to respect us."