Planning Commission gives unanimous thumbs up to T&A's 800-worker housing project.

County planning commissioners voted 9-0 Wednesday to approve worker housing in Spreckels for up to 800 seasonal farmworkers.

The unanimous vote followed hours of vigorous testimony both supporting and opposing the project, which will effectively double the population of Spreckels at full capacity. 

Turnout at the Planning Commission hearing was overwhelming, with the county Board of Supervisors chambers packed as members of the public lined up to speak. 

Spreckels residents spoke out in stern opposition to agribusiness Tanimura & Antle's project. 

One resident said residents are already selling their homes in large numbers. Several said they worried about how seasonal workers would get to church, the grocery store and restaurants in Salinas. They worried about increased usage at their small park in the center of town. And they worry that unsavory people will be living there. 

"Drugs and prostitution are a concern of the people along River Road," said Jim Riley, the de facto mayor of the unincorporated town. 

Farmworkers spoke out on both sides of the fence. Some spoke of low-quality, crowded housing and thought this project would mark a step up.

Others urged Tanimura & Antle to hire local workers who already live in the area, though T&A has joined a growing chorus of Salinas Valley agricultural companies that claim they are facing a labor shortage for their labor-intensive business. 

T&A's intention is to bus in seasonal workers from Mexico, using H-2A visas.

H-2A, a federal program designed to provide farm laborers when growers can't find a sufficient domestic workforce, is itself a controversial program. 

“For the first time in 33 years, Tanimura & Antle has exhausted its wait list for field laborers in Salinas,” according to an FAQ by the company.

Under the rules of H-2A visas, employers are required to transport workers from Mexico at the start of the season and back home at the end of it, and they're also required to provide housing. 

Ocean Mist Farms has long relied on H-2A workers to harvest its Arizona fields in the winter, and this year started bringing H-2A workers all the way to Salinas. Ocean Mist has been renting motel rooms in Salinas and a labor camp in Gonzales as a temporary housing solution.  

T&A's rooms will be occupied primarily from April to November, during peak harvest. As many as eight workers will share a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit. 

T&A will bus employees from Mexico to Spreckels, then back over the border at the end of the season. They'll also provide transportation to the fields daily. 

The housing is limited to adults, no children or families allowed. T&A will also build a recreation and barbecue area, incorporate existing softball fields, and provide an on-site store. 

Many farmworker advocates are critical of H-2A as a modern-day version of the bracero program, shuttling short-term laborers to a controlled dormitory environment.

“These programs are inherently anti-democratic,” Bruce Goldstein, president of the Washington, D.C., nonprofit Farmworker Justice, told the Weekly in a 2011 interview. “Their employers can vote, but [workers] have no representation.”
  

Last year, officials from the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division reported Royal Oaks grower Gonzalo Fernandez ripped off $800,000 in wages form 396 H-2A workers. 

Many growers themselves have been critical of utilizing the H-2A program, albeit for different reasons. With housing, transportation and legal requirements factored in, they estimate it's 40-percent more expensive than hiring locals.

Spreckels has always been a company town.

Sugar magnate Claus Spreckels founded the tiny agricultural city that bears his name in 1899. His Spreckels Sugar Company endured for almost a century, until 1982.

That's when a newer agricultural giant, T&A, purchased the old sugarbeet farming and processing property.  

T&A owns the town's water system, and the property where a 72-home subdivision was built on the northwestern edge of town in 2006. 

Planning Commission Chair Martha Diehl says she believes T&A has offered up a project that will be self-contained, meaning the impact on Spreckels won't be as burdensome as some residents fear it will. 

"I support the project strongly," Diehl writes by email. "It’s a real step toward meeting the housing goals we set out for ourselves in the [county] general plan, providing a safe, decent and convenient housing option.

"I am sorry the residents of Spreckels are frightened. Spreckels is a nice place, and they clearly love it.

"However, thinking deeply—and I do have some direct experience of dealing with single workers living away from their families—I see this proposal as essentially self-contained. It truly seems unlikely to me [unlikely] to impact that community significantly."