This story aired in the March 17, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Imagine the scene: You work at your job all month but when payday rolls around there’s no check, no deposit in your account. Your boss says it’ll all be worked out next month… but when that pay period comes around there’s still no money.
That’s called wage theft. And it hits low-wage workers especially hard and most frequently. That’s one of the reasons why San Mateo County launched the office of Labor Standards and Enforcement last summer.
Today we hear how it's working, and how much wage theft is still happening in San Mateo County.
Click the button above to listen.
Story Transcript:
REPORTER: At the beginning of 2026, I got a call from a community organization in Half Moon Bay called Coastside Hope. A group of farmworkers wanted to meet with me. They allege that their former employer – an orchid grower in town – owes money to 20 workers. They say over a period of two months, he didn’t pay them for three pay periods. They say the total they’re owed is almost $60,000.
Sounds of reporter meeting farmworkers
(IN SPANISH) Reporter: Can you tell me your name…
REPORTER: So I head over to Coastside Hope’s location in town, away from all the farms. This place is known as a haven for farmworkers, a place for them to get aid, share what’s going on at work, or brainstorm housing solutions.REPORTER: I enter the makeshift classroom area on the second floor and I see seven farmworkers sitting around a table: Men and women, young and old, still in their workwear clothes. They come after clocking out of their jobs to tell their stories.
Ramiro Cortez tells me that he worked with the orchid grower for a year.
RAMIRO CORTEZ: La tienda rebotaba a los cheques y ya nos decía que teníamos que llevar el papel que nos daban y ya nos hacía otro cheque para la tienda.
(Translated: The store would not accept the paychecks that bounced and they asked us if we could bring back a check to pay the store.)
REPORTER: He says he didn’t know there was a real problem until he tried to buy groceries with his paycheck at the market. And it bounced.
Another farmworker, “ Ave”, is here but she’s nervous about talking. She only feels comfortable sharing her first name.
“AVE”: Pensamos que si nos va a mandar el dinerito. Estoy con 4 meses de embarazo y si lo necesito pues.
(Translated: We're wondering if he'll send us the money. I'm four months pregnant, and I need it.)
REPORTER: Now “Ave” wonders if they’ll ever get the money. She’s entering her second trimester of pregnancy and needs to be paid now.
Last to speak is Oscar E. De Leon. He says, many workers are scared to talk about wage theft.
OSCAR E. DE LEÓN in Spanish: Pero muchas de esas personas tienen miedo venir a dar la cara porque dicen que a lo mejor este, si ellos vienen y hablan, el señor se va a enojar más y ya no les va a hacer el pago.
(Translated: Most of the time, most people are fearful of showing their face/facing the consequence, because some workers believe if they stand up, then their boss will get mad and not pay.)
REPORTER: De Leon says many farmworkers don’t complain to their bosses out of fear of retaliation. But their situation at the orchid farm went too far.REPORTER: Now I called and messaged their former boss, the orchid grower, multiple times but I didn’t get a response, so I’m only able to share the perspectives of these farmworkers.
De Leon says, when he started his job in the late summer, the red flags appeared early: paychecks were consistently late or incomplete. By fall, the situation turned dire.
DE LEÓN: La primera quincena que nos prometió pagar, el dijo que había dinero pero venía tarde. Que venía de Canadá.
(Translated: The first paycheck he promised to pay, he said that there was money but it’s coming late. It’s coming from Canada.)
REPORTER: De Leon tells me, his boss claimed the funds were being wired from Canada and that’s why they were coming late. But by October, what their boss owed them became a little startling. The workers were promised full payment by the end of the month. De Leon says he wasn’t paid anything in November.
DE LEÓN: Después se atrasó con dos cheques... y después se le juntaron los tres cheques.
(Translated: Then he was late with two paychecks and then it was three paychecks.)
REPORTER: In December, that one missing check became three. Despite this, the operator of the farm urged patience, asking the crew to pull overtime to finish orchid shipments for the holidays.
REPORTER: De Leon says, the workers felt like fulfilling those holiday orders was the only way they might ever see a paycheck, that shipping out the orchids was the only way for the company to get money.
DE LEÓN: Pero llegó la realidad que ahora se nos esconde... ya no llega a responder.
(Translated: Then reality hit us when he started to hide. He doesn’t respond to us anymore.)
REPORTER: De Leon says after they prepped the holiday orders, the boss vanished, and he didn’t respond to WhatsApp messages.
DE LEÓN: Justamente en la navidad... tenemos que pagar la renta y otro que teníamos que pagar regalos para nuestros hijos.
(Translated: Right when it’s Christmas, we have to pay rent and also pay for our kids’ gifts.)
REPORTER: De Leon says, with Christmas coming up, he and his coworkers were worried about how to pay rent and buy gifts for their kids. He and his coworkers received a grim piece of advice by their managers: it was time to seek outside help.
They turned to Coastside Hope, which has a history of supporting farmworkers. They also turned to a new county agency: The Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement or the OLSE.
Sounds of County Executives meeting
REPORTER: I meet with two people from the office: First, Shireen Malekafzali.
She says county supervisors have been trying to tackle the issue of wage theft for years. But the county got more power in 2024 when a new state bill gave local prosecutors the ability to enforce labor laws. She says wage theft is an issue for both workers and honest employers.
SHIREEN MALEKFZALI: “We want to prevent wage theft and undercutting of appropriate wages and there's a lot of employers that follow the law and unfortunately in many industries, they get undercut by employers and competitors that are not paying their workers adequately.
REPORTER: Her colleague, Shane Ross says that in their first months of operation, the OLSE is learning where the issues are as they do outreach and receive calls for investigation.
Recent studies show that, across California, one in five farmworkers has experienced wage theft.
SHANE ROSS: There's a reason that agriculture was one of the, like, priority industries for the office in terms of our outreach. But we also see wage theft in restaurants. We see it in construction, we see it in retail, we see it in like educational service settings.
REPORTER: And who is most vulnerable? Here’s Shireen Malekafzali, again.
MALEKAFZALI: Where there are immigrant workers. There is more vulnerability to being taken advantage of. So those kinds of industries tend to lend themselves more to issues of wage theft.
REPORTER: Staff at OLSE say they know that there is a lot more wage theft happening than what’s being reported, but here’s what we know: once the county started doing outreach and education, their hotline started getting calls. Since the department launched IN July 2025, the OLSE says they've received close to 200 calls.
MALEKAFZALI: Once people are aware of their rights, they want to exercise those rights. Once employers are aware that they have challenges, then they want to fix those challenges.
REPORTER: The county is publicizing a recent win against wage theft. Last November, a farmworker couple who worked in a Hemp Farm in Half Moon Bay recovered nearly $12,000 [twelve thousand dollars] in lost wages.
REPORTER: Shane Ross tells me when the OLSE gets a call, they interview the worker and then others to see how widespread the problem is. The OLSE determines if the case warrants a civil investigation or a criminal referral to the District Attorney. They notify the employer, requesting payroll and timekeeping records to look for discrepancies.
ROSS: We always give the employer a chance to tell their side of the story, because we know we may not be getting the full story from the worker.
REPORTER: If a violation is confirmed, the office holds settlement talks.
ROSS: The goal is finding a resolution where the employer... makes their workers whole. And just getting paid back is often not enough to repair the damage to credit or rental arrears, or something like that.
Sound of the door opening and meeting de Leon at his house..
REPORTER: I caught up with Oscar E. de León two weeks after that roundtable. It’s Saturday morning and today is his day of rest. De Leon and his 20 coworkers now work at Rocket Farms, a wholesale greenhouse grower in Half Moon Bay where they continue to pack flower shipments.REPORTER: They say they’ve been paid steadily here by their bosses, without a problem. As for his previous employer?
DE LEÓN: No solamente pagó un cheque. El último cheque. El más chiquito, el final que fueron una semana de trabajo que trabajamos al último.
(Translated: No, just one check. The last check. The smallest, the final one where we worked for one week.)
REPORTER: De Leon says he was paid a final, small check. It was for his last week of work in January. He says, he still hasn’t received the three paychecks he’s been missing for months. I ask if his former boss were here in front of him, what would he say?
DE LEÓN: Pues yo solamente lo que deseo es que el señor se toque el corazón porque yo veo que él tiene un hijo y en el futuro yo no le no le gustaría a él que le hicieran a su hijo o a él.
(Translated: All I would want is that our boss touches his heart because I know he has a son and I wouldn’t want in future something like this to happen to his son or him.)
REPORTER: He says: he would want his former boss to have a change of heart. He's seen that the man has a son and he wouldn’t want the roles to be reversed, to have something like this happen to him or to his son.
De León and some of his coworkers have noticed a new crew of workers coming to their former jobsite just outside of Half Moon Bay. REPORTER: It makes de León wonder if the new crew is getting paid or if they will also be victims of wage theft.
