San Mateo County Farmworkers Protest Alleged Wage Theft at Orchid Farm with Help from Coastside Hope and the New Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement

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ARTICLE. From KALW, by Sebastian Miño-Bucheli, published March 17th, 2026.
Click to read or listen to the whole story.

Sebastian Miño-Bucheli is a multimedia journalist and California Local News Fellow with Coastside News in Half Moon Bay. He’s originally from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, but he’s been loving his past four years here in the Bay Area. Sebastian is an Ecuadorian-American who reports stories for the Latinx community.

This story aired in the March 17, 2026 episode of KALW’s 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 to read or listen to the whole story.