Taking an important stand for workers’ rights, the Los Angeles City Attorney has filed criminal charges against carwash owners in that city who systematically exploit their employees. City Attorney Rockard (Rocky) J. Delgadillo recently charged two owners of four carwash operations and one of their managers with 176 counts of worker abuses.
The criminal complaint, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that brothers Benny and Nissan Pirian and manager Manuel Reyes routinely ignored labor laws requiring minimum wages, maximum hours and rest breaks. According to the complaint, workers were forced to drink unsanitary water, failed to receive proper training in the safe use of machinery and harsh chemicals, and failed to receive medical treatment when they sustained cuts and burns. After some workers tried to form a union and filed a class-action lawsuit, Mr. Reyes allegedly brandished a machete and held rounds of ammunition in his hands to intimidate workers into silence.
As the Los Angeles City Attorney detailed the abuses alleged in the complaint, he noted that “a group of unscrupulous owners and managers have created a work environment that borders on indentured servitude.” Henry Huerta, director of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, an effort by a special coalition of unions and community, environmental, human rights and other groups to tackle systemic abuses in the industry, has called carwash operations in the Los Angeles area “sweatshops operating in plain sight.”
The Public Welfare Foundation provided the first financial support to the CLEAN Carwash Campaign through its 2008 grant of $200,000 to Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance. Eliminating the exploitation of workers is a key goal of the Public Welfare Foundation’s Workers’ Rights program.
The CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which began last March, is bringing to light the often abysmal conditions endured by an estimated 10,000 workers who wash, wax, dry and detail cars in Los Angeles and the surrounding suburbs. At the same time that the Campaign seeks to educate workers about their rights, it also tries to get carwash companies to sign a “Clean Agreement,” under which they agree to recognize their employees’ right to organize and they agree to comply with fair labor standards and practices as well as with environmental rules.
Although no companies have signed the agreement yet, the campaign found at least 37 workers who were willing to give details about abuses that they said they and their co-workers were forced to put up with. Those details were further investigated by the City Attorney’s office and spurred the criminal complaint.
For more information, please visit http://www.cleancarwashla.org/ and http://www.kiwa.org/.
