on the cover / By Japhet Weeks

The Iceman Cometh

Misinformation, conjecture and confusion have marked the recent Sun Valley layoffs. This is due in large part to the fact that the undocumented portion of Humboldt’s Latino community is understandably silent, but it’s also because the Latino community in general here — some 20,000 strong — lacks an organizational hub, a clearinghouse for news and information.

When I first got in touch with Monica Rivera at the Newcomer Center before the Sun Valley story broke in the local papers, she hadn’t heard a word about the layoffs. Nor had Manos Unidos, a Latino advocacy group in Del Norte County, where some of the affected Sun Valley employees worked. A representative from Mike Thompson’s office at the LatinoNet meeting was unsure exactly what kind of letter Sun Valley had received from ICE, nor could she say with any certainty whether or not ICE would come knocking door-to-door at the homes of the recently laid-off workers. (The immigration-related “layoffs,” according to Thompson’s office, are the first of their kind in District One). Even ICE could not go on the record with specifics about Sun Valley — personnel could only speak in generalities.

In this sort of an environment, it’s no wonder that some workers are questioning their former employer’s true motives. “I think they wanted to save money because of the bad state of the economy,” Alejandro said, “because lately they were also getting rid of a lot of our benefits. Before the company used to give us everything we needed: overalls, work gloves, safety goggles, rubber boots — but starting this year, they took that all away from us. We had to buy them ourselves.” These changes affected all employees, he said, the documented and undocumented alike. (In a written statement, Sun Valley denied these allegations. “Sun Valley provides each of its team members with the proper safety equipment required by OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration].”)

Still, Alejandro complained that the treatment by Sun Valley of these two separate groups of employees was not in fact equal: “It’s always been that legal workers have more benefits than undocumented workers,” he said. “Because they have more rights, they’re treated more fairly. They make more and work less.”

ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice would not “speculate about [the] next steps” her agency would take with regards to Sun Valley, but she did say, “Our priority in workforce investigations is to determine whether any criminal violations have taken place and pursuing those who were responsible if they did.” That may involve the company itself or it may not. As a haggard-looking Lane DeVries told the Journalabout his flower farm’s prospects for pulling through their recent ordeal, “Time will tell.”

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