Immigration Law

California Car Washes Use Illegal Immigrant Labor Without Paying Their Workers

By Robert Kraft

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an interesting story about the abuse of unauthorized immigrants working in car washes in Southern California. Essentially, the immigrants work for tips only, allowing the employers to avoid paying wages or taxes of any type. Fear of deportation keeps the car wash workers from complaining. It's just one more way that mistreatment of illegal aliens allows Americans to pay lower prices for goods and services. Here are excerpts from the story:

A team of state inspectors strode into the Blue Wave Car Wash in West Los Angeles, past latte-sipping customers in electric massage chairs and into the gritty carwash tunnel.

"¿Cuánto gana usted?" the inspectors asked worker after worker, about 20 of them, most Latino immigrants. How much do you make? Each carwashero responded that he earned minimum wage or more -- just as the owner of the Blue Wave, one of the region's busiest carwashes, had told the inspectors.

Looking over payroll records, however, the regulators became suspicious. Employees who said they were full time were listed as working just 10 or 15 hours a week.

Inspector Martha Mendoza ushered Juan Cruz Santiago, a small man with salt-and-pepper hair, away from the others. During gentle questioning under a ficus tree, he admitted that most days, he and his 66-year-old father worked for tips only. So did nearly half the other employees, he said. It had been that way for at least six years.

"It's bad," the 41-year-old Oaxacan immigrant whispered to Mendoza, his eyes darting nervously toward his boss' office. "Other carwashes are the same, no?"

Many are. A Times investigation has found that hand carwashes, automotive beauty shops patronized by tens of thousands of Southern California motorists every day, often brazenly violate basic labor and immigration laws, with little risk of penalty.

Half or more of carwash owners flout the minimum-wage law, estimated David Dorame, the longtime lead investigator for low-wage industries at California's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.

"Tips only" is a requirement for some new workers until owners are satisfied that they can properly dry a car, laborers said. Their take is typically $10 to $30 a day.

Desperate for a toehold in the region's underground economy, many in the largely undocumented workforce are loath to complain for fear of being fired, physically threatened or deported.

Pedro Guzman, an undocumented Honduran immigrant, said a manager at a Hollywood carwash was able to keep employees washing at a furious pace -- 350 to 700 cars a day -- with two words in ungrammatical Spanish: "Quiere casa?" "Want to go home?"

Immigration authorities have done little to discourage the steady flow of undocumented workers into carwash jobs, affording owners an endless supply of cheap, eager and easily exploited laborers.

Despite the national debate over illegal immigration and a recent crackdown on some employers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they have not raided a single California carwash in at least four years.

Full post as published by Immigration Law Answers Blog on March 29, 2008 (boomark / email).