Sophia Bollag, Elena Kadvany, Nora Mishanec, Jessica Flores
Jan. 25, 2023Updated: Jan. 25, 2023 8:35 p.m.
Workers killed in a massacre at two mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay on Monday worked for low wages and were living in conditions the San Mateo County district attorney described as “squalor.”
Local nonprofit Ayudando Latinos a Soñar visited one of the farms, California Terra Garden, regularly to provide workers and their families with food and supplies, “because of the high cost of living and the low income that they make,” said Executive Director Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga.
What is being called the deadliest mass shooting in San Mateo County history, in which a gunman killed seven people and injured another, quickly drew attention to poor living conditions and low pay for farmworkers across the state, which advocacy organizations say is standard in the industry.
“It’s revealing of the reality that a lot of California farmworkers are living in,” said Antonio De-Loera Brust, communications director for labor union United Farm Workers. “It’s tragic that it took a shocking act of violence and seven lost lives to draw attention to it, but it is a reality faced not just in the Half Moon Bay area but across California.”
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San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe mentioned the poor conditions during a news conference Wednesday. The county executive had called him that morning and said: “Now we know about it, and we have to act on it.”
Abraham Perez, 50, told The Chronicle he used to work at California Terra Garden but left because of the harsh working conditions and demanding managers. He got a new job as a butcher at a small grocery store. He was not at the farm at the time of the shooting, but knew one of the victims, Martin “Marciano” Martinez-Jimenez, from when they were young men living in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called out farms for their treatment of workers during a Tuesday news conference in Half Moon Bay. He met with farmworkers and other community members about the shooting.
“Some of you should see where these folks are living, the conditions they’re in. Living in shipping containers, making $9 an hour,” he said. “No health care, no support services.”
After the press conference, Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said the governor wasn’t trying to single out a particular farm, but rather was speaking generally about the conditions he had heard about from workers he spoke with that day.
Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, a former state lawmaker who now leads the California Labor Federation, said the Legislature and governor have worked to ensure that state labor laws prohibit farmworkers from being paid below the state minimum wage of $15.50, including one she wrote to require that farmworkers be paid overtime. Last year, Newsom signed a law making it easier for farmworkers to unionize. Gonzalez Fletcher said Newsom’s comments show the state needs to do more to enforce those laws.
“If he’s hearing firsthand that these workers are being paid subminimum wage … why is that not being investigated?” she said. “There is a crime going on right in front of the governor.”
After The Chronicle published an initial version of this story, Newsom announced that his administration was investigating the farms involved in the shooting “to ensure workers are treated fairly and with the compassion they deserve,” according to a statement from Villaseñor.
“The conditions farmworkers shared with the governor – being paid $9 an hour and living in shipping containers – are simply deplorable,” Villaseñor wrote. “Our country relies on their back-breaking work, yet Congress cannot even provide them the stability of raising their families and working in this country without fear of deportation, which contributes to their vulnerability in the workplace. That is no way to live.”
Both the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the labor commissioner’s office are “looking into potential labor and workplace safety and health violations for the worksites in Half Moon Bay where the mass shootings took place,” said Erin Hickey, a spokesperson for the Department of Industrial Relations.
David Oates, a spokesperson for California Terra Garden, denied that Newsom was referring to this Half Moon Bay farm. About 27 people, including workers’ spouses and children, live in trailers and RVs on the site, which he said “are not elaborate accommodations but they certainly are comfortable.” Some workers live elsewhere but those on the property pay the owners about $300 a month in rent, Oates said. They earn between $16.50 and $20 an hour, plus benefits, he said.
“They’re like family,” Oates said of the California Terra Garden workers, who have been relocated to local hotels in the wake of the shooting. “Any characterization that someone would try to make that they were treated anything but that is incorrect.”
The owners of Concord Farms, the second site in Monday’s rampage, did not respond to requests for comment. It is unclear if any workers lived on that property.
For farmworker advocates, Newsom’s comments were a stark reminder of the status quo in American agriculture.
“The living conditions are disgraceful,” said Ann López, director of the Felton-based Center for Farmworker Families in Santa Cruz County. “They live on the edge of poverty, many of them in squalor. They wash clothes in pits in the backyard.”
Because a majority of farmworkers are undocumented, Gonzalez Fletcher said they are often unaware of their rights and don’t realize they can report farm owners to the authorities and qualify for limited immunity from being deported.
López said fear of deportation means farmworkers rarely speak up about potential wage violations.
“There is no such thing as minimum wage among farmworkers,” López said. “It’s whatever the growers are willing to pay them and whatever the farmworkers are willing to work for.”
Though she said she hears about a couple of farms in the region with fair working conditions, low pay and substandard housing are systemic throughout the industry. The housing prospects for workers are particularly bad because rents are so high.
She said she knew of one group of 16 adults living in a 1,000-square-foot apartment who had to line up every morning to use the bathroom.
By Wednesday afternoon, a small mountain of flowers had accumulated at a park in downtown Half Moon Bay, a colorful bounty to which Rita Mancera added three handmade signs of support with messages written in Chinese, Spanish and English. Mancera, the executive director of nonprofit Puente de la Costa Sur, said the shooting had only added to the already overwhelming set of housing, immigration and health care challenges facing the communities, she said.
Through her work with her nonprofit, Mancera said she has witnessed farmworkers living in cramped spaces with an entire family packed into one room.
“Families feel they can’t speak up for fear of losing their housing,” she said.
In recent years the state has allocated money to build farmworker housing, though Gonzalez Fletcher said it hasn’t been enough to meet the need.
A 2017 report found that about 70% of workers in San Mateo County live on the property they farm, many in makeshift, overcrowded conditions.
De-Loera Brust said it’s common to see farm owners offering workers housing under the federal government’s H-2A visa program, which allows U.S. employers who meet specific requirements, including providing housing, to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs.
“We find that employers often cut corners to cut costs and the housing conditions can be truly atrocious,” he said.
The shooting may galvanize United Farm Workers to organize in Half Moon Bay, in part due to Newsom’s comments about working conditions, De-Loera Brust said.
Darlene Tenes, who started distributing supplies to farmworkers during the pandemic through her Farmworkers Caravan program, just visited one of the farms in December. She gave out tamales and Christmas stockings to the workers and their children, and saw the trailers they lived in.
“In general, farmworkers are always under a lot of duress,” she said. “They’re working 40 to 70 hours a week; they’re working hard labor; and they’re living in poverty. … They’re under a lot of stress.”
On Wednesday morning, Tenes was busy gathering donations at the San Jose Women’s Center to provide to the families displaced from the farms where the shooting took place.
About 40 families were forced to leave their belongings behind in the aftermath of the shooting and are now staying at a nearby motel, she said.
Gonzalez Fletcher said the immense stress farmworkers are under may have been a factor in the shooting.
Police have charged 66-year-old Chunli Zhao, who was a worker at California Terra Garden, with seven counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and other felony charges in connection with the shootings.
“Working under those conditions at that age, the mental health pressure that would place on a person has to be taken into account,” she said. “It’s part of the cycle of abuse that is happening to these human beings.”
Authorities have called the massacre a “workplace violence incident,” but no other details about a potential motive have been released.
Chronicle staff writer Matthias Gafni contributed to this report.
Sophia Bollag, Elena Kadvany, Nora Mishanec and Jessica Flores are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: sophia.bollag@sfchronicle.com, elena.kadvany@sfchronicle.com, nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com, jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophiaBollag, @ekadvany, @jesssmflores
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Sophia Bollag joined the San Francisco Chronicle as a politics reporter in 2022. She has covered state government from Sacramento since 2016 and has worked at The Sacramento Bee, The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times. She grew up in the East Bay and graduated from Northwestern University, where she studied journalism and literature.
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Elena Kadvany joined The San Francisco Chronicle as a food reporter in 2021. Previously, she was a staff writer at the Palo Alto Weekly and its sister publications, where she covered restaurants and education and also founded the Peninsula Foodist restaurant column and newsletter.
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Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle breaking news and enterprise reporter. She joined the paper in 2020 as a Hearst fellow and returned in 2022 after a stint at The Houston Chronicle.
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Jessica Flores is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining The Chronicle in 2021, she worked for USA Today, NPR affiliate KPCC and Curbed LA. Originally from L.A., she received her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles.