Documentary Spotlights Abuses in Carwash Industry
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A just-released mini-documentary, “The New American Sweatshop,” shines a glaring light on the inhumane and illegal conditions Los Angeles carwash workers are forced to endure.
California leads the nation in the number of car wash operations with nearly 500 in Los Angeles County alone. Although the industry is highly profitable, the largely immigrant workers, known as carwasheros, often are forced to work long hours at abysmal wages, according to the CLEAN Carwash Campaign. They face rampant health and safety hazards. They are denied time to rest or eat, and are refused such basic necessities as clean drinking water or shade.
California Fines Carwashes $700,000
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Chloe Osmer of the Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) Carwash Campaign reports on a series of enforcement actions last week by California’s Labor Commissioner Angela Bradstreet at more than 200 carwash operations in the state.
The California labor commissioner’s office investigated 247 carwashes in California, including nearly 50 in Los Angeles County alone. The businesses include carwashes that the CLEAN Carwash Campaign had reported to the state as having potential wage-and-hour violations based on complaints from workers.
The actions, which resulted in more than $700,000 in fines to the carwashes, made it clear that the carwash industry continues to violate even the most basic laws protecting workers. The industry’s widespread problems with compliance highlight the need for workers to have a union to help enforce standards in their workplace.
L.A. Drivers: Carwash Workers May Live on Tips
Drivers in Los Angeles are getting the message: Carwash workers often are being exploited by their employers.
As KCET-TV reported in recent days:
“The next time you visit a carwash, think twice about how much you tip the person who wipes down your vehicle. That may be the only pay he receives. Correspondent Angie Crouch investigates widespread labor violations at Southern California car washes.”
The investigation of the workers’ plight comes more than a year after carwash workers in the area joined together to win basics rights at their workplaces—like actually getting paid. The Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) Carwash Campaign, a coalition of community, religious, environmental and immigrant rights organizations, formed in March 2008 to aid Los Angeles carwash workers in their efforts to form a union with the United Steelworkers (USW).
Carwash Workers Win Big Victory in NLRB Settlement
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Carwash workers in Los Angeles won a major victory in their struggle for better working conditions and decent pay. Today, the workers reached a formal settlement in their National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint against Vermont Hand Wash, one of the area’s most notorious anti-worker car washes.
As a result of the settlement, Vermont’s owners must pay more than $50,000 in back pay to workers who were illegally fired for union activity.
The NLRB issued the complaint in late May alleging that Vermont’s management targeted and then fired three workers because they sought to form a union. According to the complaint, among other retaliatory acts, Vermont management cut the hours of union supporters or assigned them less desirable duties and unplugged the time clock when union supporters picketed the carwash, resulting in a loss of wages to workers on the job.
The complaint identifies one manager, Manuel Reyes, who, it says, threatened employees on multiple occasions with bullets, a machete and a combat knife. The NLRB also charged Reyes with similarly threatening two union organizers with a side-handle billy club in front of carwash employees.
Justice for Car Wash Workers Too Radical for L.A.
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Looks like a billboard supporting workers’ rights is too controversial for the corporate hacks who seem to run Los Angeles.
The billboard, outside the Vermont Hand Wash in downtown L.A., carried this “radical” statement: “Wash Away Injustice! Support Carwash Workers.” Before it was unveiled, the Vermont Hand Wash, one of the most notorious anti-worker car washes in the city, pressured CBS Billboard to pull it down before a rally took place in support of car wash workers who are fighting to join a union to improve conditions in the industry. Nevermind that the language and design of the billboard had been approved in advance.
As the workers took down the sign, car wash workers and their supporters chanted, “Shame on you!” and “Don’t take it down!” The rally, with hundreds of workers in the Los Angeles area joining AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, members of Congress and local union, clergy and community leaders for the unveiling, carried on below the symbolically blank billboard.
Henry Huerta, director of the Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) campaign, said:
We came here today to unveil a billboard with a message to Angelinos to “Support Carwash Workers” in their struggle against exploitation by the owners of this carwash. Unfortunately, the company that owns this billboard caved to pressure from the Pirian family. They have violated our First Amendment Rights to Free Speech and are complicit in this employer’s violation of workers’ rights to Free Association. SHAME ON CBS BILLBOARD! AND SHAME ON THE PIRIAN FAMILY!
Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Attorney filed criminal charges against Benny and Nisan Pirian, the owners, and Manuel Reyes, manager of the Vermont Hand Wash, with 220 counts of criminal misconduct altogether—including conspiracy, witness intimidation, grand theft, brandishing a deadly weapon, failure to pay wages and failure to comply with wage orders of the state’s Industrial Welfare Commission regulating workplace conditions.
