California regulators have cited the Central Valley nursery owned by Republican Rep. John Duarte and his family for several safety violations during the years that the incumbent congressman was in charge of the business, records show.

Founded by Duarte, his parents and his brother in 1989, Duarte Nursery is now the country's largest permanent crop nursery. Duarte was the president of the family-owned company in Stanislaus County from 2008 until 2022, when he won a seat in Congress.

Workplace safety regulators cited the nursery eight times for safety violations and issued $22,220‬ in fines during the years that Duarte was the president, including in one case that involved the death of an employee, records show.

Duarte Nursery employs hundreds of people in year-round and seasonal work, including in the vast greenhouses and on-site research lab at their headquarters in Hughson.

The race in the heavily agricultural 13th Congressional District is a bitter rematch of 2022, when Duarte beat Democrat Adam Gray by 564 votes, the second-closest margin in the nation. The race is among the handful of contests nationwide that are seen as pivotal in determining which party controls Congress after the Nov. 5 election.

Duarte rose to prominence during his years-long legal battle over the plowing of a Tehama County field that federal officials said was protected wetlands.

The leading cause of fatalities for farmworkers is transportation accidents, and the leading causes of nonfatal injuries are equipment, falling and tripping, and overexertion.

At Duarte Nursery, workplace safety regulators issued violations connected to two accidents and three inspections between 2012 and 2021, records show.

On a warm June day in 2013, a man working as an irrigator began sweating heavily, complaining of chest pain and struggling to breathe, records show. The man was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The nursery was fined $5,000 after the worker's death. Opened 12 days after the fatality, the OSHA case said the nursery had violated a law requiring employers to promptly report deaths and serious injuries.

A few months later, a temporary worker hired by a staffing company collapsed and fainted while pouring a concrete foundation for a new greenhouse, according to OSHA records.

After a co-worker performed CPR, the report said, the employee was admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital in Turlock.

And in 2019, nine workers were sickened while removing unwanted shoots from grapevines inside a greenhouse, according to an OSHA report. The employees were treated for heat-related illness, the report said, but when their symptoms didn't improve, they were treated at a hospital for carbon monoxide exposure.

An OSHA inspector found that the nursery had committed a serious safety violation, and cited a law requiring employers to monitor the level of airborne contaminants, records show. The nursery was later fined $3,375.

The nursery has also been in a legal fight for nearly a decade with a group of former employees who alleged in Stanislaus County court that the nursery paid them less than what they were owed.

The complaint said the nursery "routinely" required employees to work five hours or more without a 30-minute uninterrupted meal break, but that the full lunch break was deducted from their paychecks. The lawsuit also alleged that the nursery did not provide paid 10-minute rest periods for every four hours worked.

The plaintiffs argued that Duarte was one of the company's key decision-makers.

Workers at Duarte Nursery also filed nearly four dozen claims for workers' compensation during the years that Duarte was president, encompassing about 150 reported injuries. Most complained of injuries to their backs, hands, shoulders, necks and knees, consistent with the repetitive agricultural work of bending, carrying and lifting.

Others told more gruesome stories, including one worker who developed an infection and required two surgeries after his hand was impaled by a thorn, and another worker who was struck from behind by a golf cart as she walked to the bathroom, resulting in permanent back pain.