A mass shooting that killed seven farmworkers in the United States last week has brought renewed attention to the hardships faced by agricultural workers in the state of California, stretched thin by low wages and the high cost of living.
The shooting on January 23 took place in the coastal community of Half Moon Bay, a small coastal town about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of San Francisco in northern California.
There, a 66-year-old farmworker named Chunli Zhao opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun at two mushroom farms where he had been employed: first at the California Terra Garden, then at Concord Farms. Zhao was later discovered in his car and taken into custody.
He later told the San Francisco news station KNTV-TV in a jailhouse interview that he had been frustrated with the conditions he encountered at the farms, where he described bullying and long working hours that went unaddressed by management.
Prosecutors also said that Zhao’s supervisor demanded he pay $100 for repairs after a forklift he was operating collided with a co-worker’s bulldozer. Both the supervisor and the co-worker were killed in Zhao’s attack.
In the days since the shooting, state and local officials, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, have visited the area and denounced conditions in and around the farms. The governor’s office has announced that it would open investigations into both worksites.
“Some of you should see where these folks are living, the conditions they’re in, living in shipping containers,” Newsom said in a news conference after visiting the sites. A spokesperson for Newsom’s office later described the conditions as “simply deplorable”.
Local advocacy groups, however, said that the conditions are not surprising, and that low wages often force workers and their families to live in cramped conditions in the community, as multiple people share a small space to save money.
“As we have seen now, some of the farms will end up operating illegal housing units that are in extremely deplorable conditions,” said Hyun-Mi Kim, who has worked on housing issues in the area around Half Moon Bay with the local group Puente.
“Sometimes, three to four different households will have to share a single trailer with no clean water, no proper heating. Some farmworkers sleep in their cars. This is not new, so nobody can act surprised.”
Local news stations have reported that some…