Former Workers Say Rancher Took Part in Mistreating Them

A Somis flower rancher charged with enslaving hundreds of Mexican laborers was regularly involved in illegal activities at his ranch--personally forbidding workers to leave, ordering them to buy all their food at a company store and once paying a smuggler for services while workers watched--according to documents filed by federal prosecutors this week.

Summaries of government interviews with 41 former laborers at Edwin M. Ives’ compound on Somis Road detail for the first time the degree of involvement the 54-year-old ranch owner allegedly had in the treatment of his workers.

The owner was there almost every day, and the foremen often made laborers work faster when he was around, one laborer told investigators.

“The owner would tell the workers, in broken Spanish, to work fast or they would lose their jobs,” another laborer said.

Once, when workers threatened a strike to protest low wages and confinement, Ives gathered them together and said, “I have enough money to last a lifetime, so if you don’t want to work, fine,” a third laborer told investigators.

Prosecutors allege that workers were smuggled to Ives’ 50-acre compound during the 1980s and forced to work for $1 an hour or less. Ives, six ranch overseers and an alleged smuggler are charged in a 15-count indictment alleging civil rights and labor-law violations.

The defendants have maintained their innocence, and their attorneys say they can produce 100 workers to testify that Ives was a fair employer to whom they returned year after year.

Janet Levine, one of seven defense attorneys, said Friday that much of the information in the laborers’ statements is irrelevant to the criminal charges in the case.

“I read a lot about them cutting the workers’ hair,” said Levine, referring to the military-style cuts required of workers on arrival at the ranch.

However, the statements also emphasize the small paychecks workers received. One alleged that he made $300 in five months and another said he saved $150 in seven months after company deductions for food and sundries.

In addition, the statements highlighted alleged mistreatment of workers when they were ill or injured.

One worker collapsed in the field and died in 1988 because he was denied proper medical care, laborers told investigators. The workers paid $15 to $25 each for the man’s body to be flown home to a rural Indian village in the state of Oaxaca, they said.

One worker said he was vomiting blood, and another said his foot was burned with acid. Both said they were given no medical assistance.

A laborer said he was given an ointment to rub on his sore arm and charged $8 for it. Another said a foreman refused to give him medicine for a stomachache, but then finally gave him two antacid tablets for $1.

“If they cut themselves . . . there were no bandages or medication and they were told not to be sissies and to keep on working,” according to one worker summary.

Working with chemicals and dyes in greenhouses without ventilation or fans, the laborers would be repeatedly burned, the worker said. “He felt like a jailed slave,” investigators said.

The summaries were submitted Thursday to U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in support of a government motion that the 41 witnesses be allowed to testify on videotape in Mexico City about their experiences at the Ives ranch.

On Oct. 2, Marshall denied a similar motion involving 63 witnesses but invited prosecutors to try to buttress their case. The government will have to show that the Mexican witnesses will not testify in Los Angeles during Ives’ trial, which is set for March.

They must also show that the testimony of the Mexican witnesses is crucial and unique, which the summaries were intended to do.