State Cites Area Firms for Labor Violations : Inspections: A sweep targets farming-related companies. Authorities hand the largest penalty to a Ventura councilman.

Sweeping through western Ventura County, state labor inspectors have accused four companies of failing to properly insure or pay their employees and are investigating dozens of others, officials said Thursday.

The largest penalty was handed to Ventura City Councilman Gregory L. Carson, who owns the Mound Garden Center in east Ventura. Carson was fined $8,000 after investigators found his shop doing business without proof of workers’ compensation insurance.

Carson has 20 business days to appeal the citation or prove that his employees are covered by an existing policy.

The action against the nursery was one of a handful carried out Wednesday and Thursday as labor officials executed a three-day inspection aimed at farming-related companies suspected of skirting overtime laws or failing to properly safeguard their employees.

The wave of inspections began Wednesday, when labor officials surveyed 16 packinghouses, nurseries and growers. They visited 12 more sites Thursday and will continue the operation through today, Senior Deputy Labor Commissioner King Cheung said.

Inspectors target companies based on anonymous tips and surveillance by state labor officials, Cheung said.

Investigators said Carson’s Mound Garden Center apparently had canceled its workers’ compensation insurance policy nearly a year ago and never purchased new coverage.

“That’s a serious violation,” Cheung said. “If somebody gets hurt on the job, the employer does not have any insurance to cover (costs) for the injuries or lost wages.”

The fine represents a $1,000 penalty for failing to properly insure each of the company’s eight employees.

Carson, who was elected to the City Council in 1991, is out of the country and was not available for comment Thursday. He is due back today or Saturday, his employees said.

Aside from the Mound citation, the sweep had resulted in relatively few violations by Thursday afternoon, Cheung said. “As far as we are concerned, there are not a lot of violations here in Ventura County,” he said.

Inspectors did find three other businesses that allegedly failed to pay overtime to some of their employees and cited a fourth company for reportedly employing a 15-year-old boy to pick lemons without a valid work permit, Cheung said.

Min Yamaguchi, who owns Buena Floral Farms in Santa Paula, was accused of failing to pay overtime wages to one of his salaried employees.

“They hit everybody in this area,” said Yamaguchi, who said he was not aware of state laws that entitle most salaried employees working more than 60 hours a week to overtime pay.

“There’s one employee involved who is salary, and I wasn’t completely aware of the fact that the salary employees are subject to overtime rules,” he said.

“Other employees who have been on an hourly basis . . . I’ve always paid overtime,” Yamaguchi said.

Overtime violations require employers to submit to an audit within 15 days, in which state bookkeepers calculate overtime and determine whether employees are paid what they are due, Cheung said.

Yamaguchi said he would begin paying overtime to his one salaried employee. But he said he would fight an order to pay three years’ worth of accrued overtime.

Carson’s business also was hit with a stop-work order that prohibits the nursery from being run by anyone but the owner until a workers’ compensation insurance policy is purchased, Cheung said.

But workers at the nursery continued doing business Thursday.

“Greg’s out of town and I don’t know anything about it,” one employee said. The inspectors “just came in and asked questions, and then they left,” another said.

A similar sweep by labor inspectors in Ventura County last year charged a Somis packing company with failing to cover its employees with workers’ compensation insurance.

But the $27,000 fine was dismissed after owners of the firm proved they were fully insured at the time of the inspection.

State labor officials later apologized, saying they are required to issue citations when there is no proof of insurance coverage on site.