Labor Strike Team Inspects Farms : Agriculture: State officials launch two-day enforcement effort in county. Santa Paula nursery is fined and shut down for workers’ comp violations.

State investigators Tuesday launched a crackdown on Ventura County agricultural operations suspected of violating labor laws, including a Santa Paula flower grower who was shut down for allegedly failing to insure his workers against on-the-job accidents.

During the first day of the two-day enforcement effort, members of a multi-agency strike team inspected farms and nurseries from Oxnard to Santa Paula in response to complaints that workers were being paid below minimum wage or were not being paid at all.

The countywide effort is expected to continue today, including a sweep through the food-rich farm belt that stretches from Saticoy to Moorpark.

“This is part of an overall effort that we are going to be making throughout the year,” said Jose Millan, who heads a year-old statewide effort to enforce labor laws designed to protect farm workers and other laborers. “We are going to build upon this for a major sweep later this year.”

The investigators are members of the Targeted Industries Partnership Program, or TIPP, established in late 1992 to beef up enforcement in the state’s agriculture and garment industries.

So far, members of the joint enforcement and educational program have conducted more than 600 agricultural inspections statewide and issued more than 400 citations resulting in more than $1 million in fines.

In Santa Paula on Tuesday, investigators added another $16,000 to that total.

At Windward Farms, a small nursery located just north of the Santa Paula Airport, workers told investigators that they are paid irregularly and often their paychecks can’t be cashed because of insufficient funds.

One worker said he had not been paid in nearly a month. Another said he is owed payment for 70 hours of work.

“Everything here is bad,” said one worker, wrapping dried flowers in sheets of plastic underneath a run-down fiberglass shed. “We go to cash our checks and sometimes there aren’t any funds. Sometimes it takes days to get our money.”

John Whitton, owner of the flower ranch, told state investigators that he owes money to a few workers but that due to an accounting problem there has been a delay in payment.

He also said that he realized some workers have tried to cash checks but could not. He said there are now sufficient funds in the bank to cover all of the checks that have been written.

“We’re trying to stay in business in California and we’re trying to make a decent workplace,” Whitton said. “It takes all of my resources to keep this thing going. All of my money goes to my employees.”

At the rear of the property, workers dipped flowers into steaming vats of sodium chloride, citric acid and water. Many employees weren’t wearing gloves or masks. Runoff from the vats collected in a pond at the rear of the property, a few hundred yards from the Santa Clara River.

Greg Smith, environmental health specialist for the county, said the county responded to a complaint of chemicals being dumped at Windward Farms about two years ago. No violations of hazardous waste laws were found.

But because of the complaint made Tuesday, Smith said he will conduct another inspection at the flower ranch.

State investigators said they will review the handling and disposal of chemicals to determine whether there were any violations of state health and safety laws.

“It’s the injustice of it all,” said Roy A. Byron-Cooper, a Ventura-based inspector with the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. “It’s the little guy who doesn’t know any better and who ends up getting screwed.”

But it was the failure to provide workers’ compensation insurance to the flower ranch’s 16 employees that prompted state investigators to shut down the operation. Investigators ordered Windward Farms to cease operation until insurance was secured and issued Whitton a citation for $16,000--$1,000 for each employee not covered by insurance.

Whitton said he is in the process of acquiring workers’ compensation insurance.

State investigators said they will continue to review the case to determine if more citations and fines should be assessed.

“We did not know the extent of the environmental problems. We did not know the extent of the wage problems,” Millan said. “Those are significant here.”

Inspectors visited two other agricultural operations Tuesday. No violations were found at one of the sites, an Oxnard nursery. At the other site, a farm labor contractor, no crews were working.

Formed partly in response to criticism that the state’s agriculture industry was riddled with abuses, TIPP has been conducting inspections up and down the state.

The program is designed to coordinate and strengthen the efforts of state and federal agencies responsible for enforcing labor law.

Major sweeps have been conducted in Kern, Imperial and Riverside counties. Smaller sweeps have been done in San Diego, Orange and San Luis Obispo counties.

Millan said the current two-day sweep--which includes employees from Cal/OSHA and the state labor commissioner’s office--is aimed at addressing concerns that not enough is being done to enforce farm labor laws in Ventura County.

Also toward that end, the state labor commissioner has assigned Deputy Labor Commissioner Tony Guilin to do field inspections throughout the county.

But the enforcement effort has drawn the wrath of farm worker advocates who charge that the program is a public relations ploy designed to polish the state’s tarnished image when it comes to labor law enforcement.

Advocates say they have little confidence in the program, blasting it as too weak to scare lawbreakers into compliance.

“We hope the Labor Commission’s effort is more than a cosmetic effort, which frankly I see a two-day operation as being,” said Eileen McCarthy, an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance. “Because the abuses are so rife in this area, this kind of enforcement really can’t be done on a catch-as-catch-can basis.”

Despite such remarks, Millan said he believes the enforcement campaign is paying dividends.

“We recognize there have been problems and we have addressed those problems with the limited resources available to us,” said Millan, noting that the program recently received an additional $894,000 in funding to stay alive through fiscal year 1994-95.

“This program gets us out of our offices and into the fields and the nurseries where the problems exist.”