The state said the case against Playa Vista would be the largest wage theft payout by a California car wash.
it was fining the company more than $2.3 million in wage theft violations and penalties, its largest fine ever issued against a car wash business.
“While the timeline for investigations can be lengthy, improvements in our laws have given the Labor Commissioner’s Office … new tools to assist workers in recovering stolen wages,” said Erika Monterroza, a spokesperson, adding the state has made progress at hiring people to help enforce those laws.Support for LAist comes fromShe did not comment on the Playa Vista car wash case.
Dominguez migrated to Los Angeles, finding himself in Mar Vista, a neighborhood of midcentury homes and cramped apartment complexes east of Venice Beach. With few connections, Dominguez first found work as a day laborer. On his walk home each day, he passed a large full-service car wash. He got a job there, he said, after striking up a conversation with a car wash worker who coincidentally was from his village.Dominguez said he worked at that car wash from about 1997 to 2005.
In 2002 Narro helped UCLA law students interview 23 car wash workers for one of the earliest research papers on the industry in Los Angeles. Interviewers found several of the younger, more recently hired car washers were being paid only in tips, and many expressed the attitude of gratitude for the work — calling themselves, a play on the Spanish word for “tip.” Narro presented the paper to Sacramento lawmakers as evidence the industry needed regulation.
“We are collectively failing our workers throughout the state in industries where they need us the most.”Critics say California’s enforcement of its requirement that car washes register with the state has lacked enforcement, particularly during the pandemic. A report this year by UCLA graduate students found 770 car washes registered with the state in 2020. But there were 2,015 of these establishments operating in California according to 2020 U.S. Census figures.
The Labor Commissioner also gained new authority last year to put liens on the property of businesses that are the subject of the state’s Bureau of Field Enforcement actions, she said, to secure final payments for things such as wage theft. Recently, the commission office used this tool to collect $282,00 from another car wash business, she said.
Nissani appealed the state’s citations, saying some of the workers’ statements are untrue. Since then, COVID-19 and the administrative hearing process have dragged the case on for three years. In 2019 the state Labor Commissioner’s office found Playa Vista had short-changed Antonio Dominguez and 63 other workers in wages. It said it was fining the company more than $2.3 million in wage theft violations and penalties, its largest fine ever issued against a car wash business.Two former Playa Vista workers interviewed by CalMatters, Cesar Jacobo and Luis Diaz, told a different story.
In early 2018, Jacobo said that he was promoted to manager but asked to be demoted — in part because he felt uncomfortable choosing which workers would get work and which would not. Playa Vista’s attorneys in their appeal wrote that the car wash was undergoing renovations, getting new car washing equipment, “as a result, the need for manual labor by employees diminished.”Dominguez said he remembers no punch clock, no means provided to record his hours. Managers kept track of workers’ hours, he said, a point also made by Jacobo and Diaz in their sworn statements. Like Dominguez, they said workers were given no process to keep track of their hours.
In December 2017, Alejandra Hernandez, an inspector with the Labor Commissioner’s Bureau of Field Enforcement, received a tip about the pay practices at the Playa Vista Car Wash, according to court filings and records in Nissani’s appeal. By then, with 18 years’ experience, Hernandez had worked on at least 600 audits, 200 workplace inspections and 100 citations.
Business groups argue that the thousands of claims filed by workers last year are only a tiny fraction of California’s $3.5 trillion economy and that most businesses are trying to comply with labor laws. Economists who study the issue argue that such claims data don’t fully capture how much wage theft exists in the economy because so many workers simply don’t report these violations.When CLEAN’s referral about Playa Vista came to Hernandez, the inspector began an investigation that included surveillance of Playa Vista, two on-site inspections — including an “inspection warrant” on March 9, 2018 — and 19 worker interviews, she said in court records.
Dominguez said the process has been frustrating, like the days he worked at the car wash and waited in the alley. For the case, he would show up some days at a state office to testify remotely on one of their computers, only to wait around and eventually be sent home, he said.While he awaits resolution of the case, Dominguez and four other car wash workers have launched a new venture. On a recent weekday in July Dominguez awoke at 6 a.m.
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