(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
With investigations underway into possible labor violations at the two Half Moon Bay mushroom farms where a mass shooting occurred last month, Bay Area immigration and employment lawyers say they’re trying to get the word out about new federal protections — recently announced by the Biden administration — that could shield undocumented workers from deportation if they speak up about workplace abuses.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom visited Half Moon Bay after the Jan. 23 rampage, which took the lives of seven immigrant farmworkers, he expressed shock that employees were living in shipping containers and said some had told him they were earning just $9 an hour.
“You want to verify the California minimum wage? It’s not $9 an hour,” Newsom said. “No health care, no support, no services. But taking care of our health. Providing a service to each and every one of us, every single day.”
State officials immediately began gathering information on California Terra Garden and Concord Farms, the two worksites attacked, and gained entry two hours after law enforcement reopened the sites on Jan. 25, according to...
ALTON - Eric Sykes, the executive director of Alton Little Theater, recently took to social media to address “a narrative circulating online that Alton Little Theater is somehow an unsafe space.” ...