Cannabis workersface death and exploitation. California is stepping in after Timesinvestigation

By PaigeSt. JohnStaff Writer 

WEAVERVILLE, Calif.  —

Workersincluding this man were recruited to a licensed cannabis farm in Trinity Countyand said they felt trapped on a freezing mountain, working behind locked gateswithout heat, water, shelter and, in the end, their pay.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Acknowledging growing concern over themistreatment of cannabis workers, California regulators have quietly assembleda team to pursue labor exploitation in the state’s burgeoning weed industry.

The new unit, housed within the Departmentof Cannabis Control, recently solicited help from law enforcementagencies statewide to investigate cannabis operators who coerce or threatenworkers, subject them to hazardous conditions or deny them pay.

The April 13 bulletin, obtained byThe Times, said the unit seeks to create a “central repository” ofcannabis-related human trafficking investigations.

Its launch followed the December publication of“Dying for Your High,” a Times investigationdetailing the plight of cannabis workers who are cheated, threatened withviolence or sometimes die because of unsafe working conditions. The newspaperidentified abuse allegations against nearly 200 cannabis farms or contractors —half of them licensed by the state— since legalization. It found 35 cannabisworkers killed on the job in a five-year span, a death toll that has sincerisen to at least 37.

The story spawned a legislative town hall inMarch to gather information on exploitation in the cannabis industry, with thepromise of further hearings this fall. It also has been taken up by otherspushing for a centralized state agency to pursue labor traffickinginvestigations for workers in all industries. Though California banned humantrafficking in all forms in 2005, a state watchdog agency found enforcement ofthe law is haphazard and often lacking, with no central agency for victims toturn to.

There is a growing awareness that California’scannabis explosion — a dramatic escalation by both legal and unlicensedcultivators seeking to capitalize on the nation’s rapidly expanding weedmarkets — has put many workers in peril.

Sheriffs in five Northern California countieslast year began training narcotics officers on human trafficking intervention.Initiatives by the state attorney general and the governor’s office to combatillegal cannabis operations are also billed as having the potential to disrupthuman trafficking.

Aremote cannabis operation deep in the Trinity County forest.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

For the state cannabis agency, which licensesand regulates commercial businesses, the new investigative squad is a stepbeyond, the first to tackle exploitation of cannabis workers specifically.

The Human Trafficking/Exploitation Assessmentand Response Team — dubbed HEART — is based out of Fresno. Formed in Marchafter months of discussion, it includes six detectives already in the field onother duties, a sergeant and an analyst.

It marks a notable expansion in the mission ofthe Department of Cannabis Control, which previously said it had never takenaction against a state cannabis license holder for how it treated its workersand said that it forwarded worker complaints to state labor agencies.

A spokesman for the cannabis agency, DavidHafner, said the sworn officers were now free to work cases and refer theresults to prosecutors or federal agencies. The team is also poised to providepolice training on trafficking investigations. Hafner would not provide furtherdetails or discuss outreach to crime victims or worker advocates. He saidpublicizing the crackdown on exploitation “would not deter crime” but wouldinstead warn criminals to better conceal their activities.

The cannabis agency verified the squad’sexistence only after The Times said it had obtained a copy of the bulletin.

It has refused to discuss its handling ofworker exploitation since before September, when The Times published an expose on the state’s runaway illegalcannabis market. Lawmakers communicating with the department on ways to addressworker exploitation said they were unaware of the new unit. The cannabis agencykeeps no records of cannabis employment, including the size of the workforce.

Meanwhile, the known number of cannabisworkplace fatalities continues to rise.

A cold snap in the Mojave Desert in late 2019led to the deaths of two workers. Lucio Aguilar Rodriguez, 30, of Solano,Mexico, was found Dec. 29 inside an Adelanto greenhouse warmed by a gas heater.The air within the greenhouse was rank with exhaust fumes. An autopsy by theSan Bernardino County coroner showed carbon monoxide poisoning.

A little more than a week later, a co-workerdiscovered the body of 18-year-old Rey de Jesus Antonio Osorio in a greenhousenear Lucerne Valley, poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator.

As is the case with nearly all cannabisworkplace deaths identified by The Times, the fatalities were not reported tostate workplace safety officials. Carbon monoxide poisoning is the leadingcause of death, claiming the lives of 22 workers.

With no organized outreach, the grievances ofcannabis workers about substandard conditions and threats of violence oftenshow up in California’s wage claims system, run by the Departmentof Industrial Relations. A labor official in March told lawmakersthat case agents can refer allegations to a field enforcement division, butthey are limited to enforcing work and hour laws.

Pending wage claims against a licensed TrinityCounty farm include photographs of freezing working conditions, with one workerreporting he sought shelter inside a steel shipping container, without accessto drinking water, a bathroom or light.

In interviews, two workers told of laboring onthe farm for 11 days behind a locked gate, under spartan conditions. Theyprovided copies of work logs that showed as many as 21 workers who put in 13-to 14-hour days gathering the harvest. They shared videos of a makeshift workcamp, with a single-burner propane stove for outdoor cooking, a wood palletthat served as the food prep surface, a portable toilet, and the shippingcontainer where they worked during the day and some slept at night.

The container was unheated to protect cannabisthat was to be fresh frozen, but workers said on the last two days, astemperatures fell below freezing, they secretly brought in a propane heater.According to interviews, the majority of workers were from Argentina, recruitedby a compatriot who met them at a grocery store parking lot, then led them upthe twisting dirt road.

The owner of that farm, Samuel Elias Schachter,made no reference to how workers would be accommodated on his remote12-greenhouse farm atop Browns Mountain, files at the county planning office inWeaverville show.

But neither was there an expectation he shouldhouse those working on the 3,200-foot ridge, nearly an hour from town, hisbookkeeper told The Times. It has long been common practice for cannabisworkers in Northern California’s Emerald Triangle to sleep in their cars, orbring tents.

“I’m not quite sure why they’re saying theyneed housing,” said Jeannine Greenslade, who said she was asked by Schachter torespond to The Times’ questions on his behalf.

Nor did Greenslade see an issue with thepadlocked gates on the long mountain road leading up to the farm. Cannabisoperations, by their nature, require security, she said. “Anybody can come andgo,” she said. “Nobody’s holding them.”

Workers interviewed by The Times said they didnot know the padlock combinations. “No podíamos salir,” one worker said.We couldn’t leave.

“In our case, it’s not like [human]trafficking,” another said, “but we don’t like that they closed the gate ...because we want to stay free.”

The first of several locked gates on themountain road leading to Ratchet Construction. (Brian van der Brug / LosAngeles Times)

Where Schachter’s bookkeeper and his workersmost disagreed was the matter of pay.

Two workers from the 2021 season and four from2022 allege they were promised payment after the harvest, and then were toldthere was only money enough for partial pay — as little as $900 for 117 hourswork. The 2021 workers filed a federal civil suit seeking $160,000 in wages anddamages. The 2022 claims were filed with the state labor department, andaveraged $9,400 apiece. One of those claims was dropped, without details of howit was resolved.

“He has paid everyone,” Greenslade said,contradicting the workers’ signed statements that they are owed wages.

Schachter took the labor condition allegationsseriously, said Greenslade. “We’re doing what we need to do legally to comply.”

She said, though, that California regulationsin regard to cannabis cultivation workers were vague and contradictory. Shesaid it was unclear, for example, if the bands of workers who move from farm tofarm at harvest time are “employees” or “independent contractors” or,Greenslade said, “just trimmers.”

Weaverville,from where cannabis workers said a recruiter led them up mountain roads to anisolated farm.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Workers speaking to The Times said Schachterthreatened to report them to federal immigration authorities, or castigatedthem.

“You can play the victim all you want,” he tolda worker in text messages shared with the newspaper. “No one is going to carethat it’s taking longer than expected to get paid.”

Another worker who filed a federal civil suitagainst Schachter over wage claims described a similar exchange.

“He was like, ‘Come on, bring it on ...nobody’s going to hear you,’” the worker told The Times. “‘Nobody’s going tohelp you to do that to me. Nobody’s going to listen to you.’”

A criminal lawyer representing Schachter on unrelateddomestic violence charges said he was unaware of the labor violationallegations.

That attorney, Thomas Ballanco, is himself alicensed cannabis grower and in separate matters is representing five workerswho seek $105,000 in unpaid 2021 wages from a licensed operation in Hayfork. Hesaid labor issues such as these are a facet of California cannabis’ longhistory of operating underground, hidden from the law.

“This is how employees were located, how theywere treated and how they were paid,” Ballanco said. “Nobody wanted anybody toknow anything. It was all cash. Nobody was on the books. ...

“That’s not to excuse misbehavior,” he said.“It’s a partial explanation of why it’s so rampant.”

Lawmakers said the formation of a statecannabis exploitation team does not deter their own efforts to create astatewide labor trafficking division.

A bill by Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula(D-Fresno) would put that unit within the Department of Industrial Relations.

“Labor trafficking is a severe aggregated formof wage theft,” and because of that, Arambula said, many victimized workersalready turn to the agency for help.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last year vetoed identicallegislation, saying he preferred to see a labor trafficking unit within thestate Civil Rights Department. Assemblymember BlancaRubio (D-Baldwin Park) said she is working with Newsom’s office on a bill to dojust that.

The Civil Rights Department typically handlesonly civil matters, such as workplace discrimination. In 2020 it was faulted bythe Little Hoover Commission, the state’s independent watchdog, for failing topursue labor trafficking investigations even when it had legal authority to doso.

The commission found that 15 years afterCalifornia banned all forms of human trafficking, no agency was mandated tocombat it, no data on trafficking were kept, and even departments authorized topursue criminal cases did not do so. In its series of reports, thecommission faulted the state for a scattered, “siloed” approach that focuses onsex trafficking, with little heed paid to workers across all industriesexploited through force, fraud or coercion.

California closely regulates the environmentalimpacts of cannabis, but the Times investigation found worker protections weremostly relegated to labor unions, who negotiated a state requirement forcannabis farms with 20 or more workers to enter into contracts allowingorganizers access to employees.

Those so-called labor peace agreements havelargely left cannabis field workers unprotected, said Kristin Heidelbach, alabor lobbyist and organizer.

She sat on the state’s original cannabisregulation advisory panel and since legalization has dealt with workers in thefield, first for the Teamsters, and now for the United Food and CommercialWorkers union.

While there are exceptions, she described“evasive” cannabis employers who under-report the size of their workforce toskirt regulatory requirements. She said it was emblematic of cannabis’underground culture, where growers historically distrusted authority andstructure and who to this day sell on both legal and illegal markets.

“We’re still pulling this industry into thelight,” she said.

Immigrantcannabis workers like this one say they endure substandard conditions andexploitation.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Many immigrant workers live on the margins andhave little choice than to labor on farms that provide few safeguards fromoutside threats, let alone bathroom facilities and lunch breaks, HernanHernandez, executive director of the California Farmworker Foundation, said atthe March town hall.

“Everything that we as a society have built forour workforce,” he said, “goes out the door the second they step onto thesecannabis grows.”

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