LOST HILLS, Calif. — Here in the middle of nowhere, amid a near-suffocating wave of triple-digit heat, a lone man in a straw hat and ragged clothes watches more than 800 sheep graze on a patch of desert brushland.
A guest worker from Peru, the shepherd has been on the job for nearly three years and says he hasn't had a day off since he arrived.
His home is a rundown trailer that buzzes with flies and has no air conditioning or running water. His toilet consists of a shovel that his employer gave him to bury his excrement.
"I am counting down to the hour and the minute of each day left before I can go home," said the shepherd, who asked that his name not be used for fear of angering his employer.
Advocates for the worker say that his story is typical of those for the estimated 400 to 1,000 shepherds in California who fall into a little-known group of employees exempt from earning the minimum wage.
The wage issue has put the shepherds at the forefront of a movement to examine and, perhaps in some cases, eliminate such exemptions. Other exceptions include baby-sitters, traveling carnival ride operators and Hollywood actors, but the shepherds are particularly low-profile.
"Basically, what you have here is an industry that hasn't changed in 150 years," said Chris A. Schneider, executive director of Fresno-based Central California Legal Services. "The sheepherders are in a black hole, in that they don't even get the same protections farm workers have."
California is the nation's second-largest producer of sheep and lamb, according to one industry group. One of the biggest concentrations of shepherds in the state is believed to be in Kern County, about 90 miles north of Los Angeles.
How shepherds came to be declared exempt remains unclear. In recent weeks, officials with the state's Industrial Welfare Commission have been poring through old meeting transcripts and other documents to determine when the shepherds and other workers were originally made exempt and why.
Schneider said most of California's shepherds travel from Peru and a smaller number from Chile under a federal guest worker program. The wage exemption, he said, allows some ranchers to take advantage of the shepherds by requiring them to work around the clock with no days off for a monthly salary of about $800, plus room and board.
