Artists allege indentured servant treatment in former ghost town

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Shortly after cooking for an event in late June, however, Cowley began assigning Young and Ybarra extra work. They showed KQED screenshots of text messages and a shared Notes app to-do list where Cowley and Hatch delegated them to clean cabins, take out trash and tend to animals. Ybarra and Young kept logs of their hours and completed tasks, reviewed by KQED. In a labor board estimate, they claimed hundreds of unpaid hours beyond their cooking shifts from late June to early August. They say Cowley promised to pay the couple for their extra work, but repeatedly blocked. Eventually Young and Ybarra gave up and left Pulga.

Both leaders say they were tired of tiptoeing around Cowley’s angry and erratic moods. Like other sources KQED spoke to, Young and Ybarra had given up their Bay Area housing, and they feared their own defense would leave them homeless and jobless, stranded hours away from home. them. Pulga is an isolated mountain community over a 30-minute drive from the nearest town, with limited cell service.

“I was scared – she has guns,” Young says. “We felt like we were on eggshells.

Guns are common in rural northern California, and Cowley says she’s never used hers to hurt anyone. “I have guns here in the middle of the National Forest,” Cowley says. “Has he ever been a threat to anything other than cattle? Nope.”

Sosha Young (left) and Ricky Ybarra (right) are chefs and musicians who are currently pursuing wage demands against Betsy Cowley of Pulga. (Sosha Young)

Young and Ybarra say it was common for Cowley to cross personal boundaries. Young recalled an instance where Cowley made her “extremely uncomfortable” upon seeing her naked in the shower and staring at her for about a minute while carrying on a conversation.

They say there was another incident late at night, after a discussion over money, when Cowley entered the couple’s cabin while they were in bed and partially undressed. Young and Ybarra say Cowley “threw” a $50 bill at them and asked if they were “good” for the unpaid wages. They felt humiliated and degraded.

In an interview, Cowley denied Young and Ybarra’s claims regarding the shower and cubicle incidents.

Cowley says the extra jobs she awarded Young and Ybarra were for a trade for their cabin, which she values ​​at $550 a month. (Young and Ybarra say Cowley never gave them a straight answer on how much the cabin rent would be.) Cowley also says she didn’t want Ybarra and Young to move in for the summer and her to have them. asked to leave – a claim the couple denies. “And even on top of that, I allowed them to set up a recording studio,” Cowley says. “I overprovisioned myself and reached out to people I cared about and wanted to help. And it was a constant struggle with those two.

According to California law, if an employer requires workers to live at a job site, they must obtain the workers’ written consent to deduct meals and lodging from their wages — something Young and Ybarra say Cowley did not do.

In Pulga, business transactions were often handshake agreements. But lawyer Kim Ouillette of the nonprofit Legal Aid at Work says workers can claim their rights even without a written contract.

“There are all kinds of industries where it’s quite common for people to not have a written employment contract because an employer says, ‘Here’s the rate, here’s the job’ and they’re hired to work” , said Ouillette. But, she adds, “they still have the same rights to receive minimum wage, to receive overtime – all of that.”

The Loft House in Pulga in 2018. (Sam Lefebvre/KQED) Making Pulga an artistic destination

Young and Ybarra aren’t the first workers to accuse Cowley of wage theft. In August 2021, architect Danny Wills, 35, was looking for a picturesque location to host events and artistic workshops. He contacted Cowley, and she and Hatch emailed him a job description and a salary offer of $1,400 a month for four months of work. According to emails reviewed by KQED, Cowley recruited Wills not just as a helper, but as someone who could expand Pulga’s impact as an arts destination with a residency program, events and educational workshops.

In September 2021, Wills moved to Pulga from Ohio. For the next three months, he held the position of chief financial officer of Pulga. He spoke with the county about building permits, managed Pulga’s Airbnb listings, and developed a business plan for the company. According to his work logs, shared with KQED, he also cared for animals, deep cleaned cabins, dug trenches and laid pipes.

“I woke up every day in the freezing blackness before the sun came up. And then I fell asleep late at night. And between these two moments, I [was] working nonstop,” Wills says of his experience.

Wills says Cowley never paid him his salary. Looking back, he says he stayed in hopes of making the city an artistic destination. “From an outside perspective, it’s a really amazing place. Like the fact that it’s a 150-year-old railway and mining town turned into this artists’ village where you can play music as long as you want into the night,” he says. “There’s some kind of mystical magic to it.”

Wills eventually grew frustrated and returned home to Ohio. To recover his salary, he attempted to file a mechanic’s lien on Cowley’s property. But Wills says Cowley became controversial when he sent her a certified letter with preliminary notice. He was intimidated by the prospect of fighting a legal battle, especially in eight states, and ultimately did not file the lien with Butte County.

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