State inspectors struggle to ensure farms provide ‘humane, decent’ housing for workers

When Antonio Bravo stepped into the Salinas hotel in May 2020, he first noticed a foul smell. Then he saw the bare metal cot with no mattress that his employer had given him to sleep on after working long days in the fields.

“My spirits fell when I saw that place,” said Bravo, a guest worker recruited from Michoacán, Mexico by a company that supplied farms with workers to pick strawberries for brands like Driscoll’s. “I couldn’t breathe.”