1.   At one stop, while the men talked to a crew leader, Ms. Alvarez picked yellow squash to take home for dinner.

2.   A few feet away, George Fuller, a GUC crew leader, strapped on a life jacket.

3.   Growers pay a crew leader a lump sum to hire workers at harvest time.

4.   Often the grower does not pay the crew leader enough to give the workers minimum wage.

5.   Sometimes immigrants show up at a field and begin working without even being hired, hoping the crew leaders will pay them at the end of the day.

6.   The crew leader, however, is often merely a former farm worker who bought an old truck.

7.   They can then say that the crew leader is responsible for providing field water, toilets and all the payroll details.

8.   They have no formal employment contracts, and they know their employer only through a crew leader who hires them on a street corner.

9.   Two others, identified Tuesday as crew leaders who helped recruit the workers, were paid earlier.

10.   Yet when farm workers have sued for wages owed them, the growers have successfully responded that they are not the employers, and pointed to the crew leader.