I have lived in Los Angeles since 1989. I was and still am impressed by superhighways. The climate so benign, with the icy waters of the Pacific as a background. The presence of the Latino community and the Spanish language in the life of the city.
And the homeless tents that grow like mushrooms after the rain.
Yes, although they swarm now, they were already there back then.
Has Los Angeles changed much in the last 34 years?
Looking at it from this side, it is the same poverty, the same indigence, but multiplied. They are the same problems that especially afflict Latinos and African Americans in general; It is the breath of the undocumented who sleep restlessly at night.
Because today also, Los Angeles is the American capital of the homeless. Of the extremes between it and the ostentatious wealth of Hollywood.
And Los Angeles is too the nation’s capital of wage theft.
It is like a disease, whose agents stick to where the victims are weakest.
Wage theft totals 12.5% of the net annual salary of the lowest-income Angelenos. That’s $40 lost from an average of $318 in weekly income.
Perhaps we think that wage theft is only when the worker is not paid what is due at the weekend or month. But it is more than that.
80% of workers suffer an infraction for which their money is stolen. If we count those who work during breaks to eat and rest, they are 88%.
Wage theft takes many forms. Yes, one in three workers receive less than what they are legally required to pay each week, according to a study by Ruth Milkman, Ana Luz González and Victor Narro for the Institute for Labor and Unemployment Research at the University of California Los Angeles. Angeles (UCLA).
For two-thirds of them, the stolen pay is more than one dollar per hour worked.
In one of every four cases, these are workers in permanent, stable jobs, working forty hours a week, who were not paid for overtime, an average of 10 hours during the previous work week. In the rest, they are more irregular jobs, such as car washing, that of the “carwasheros”.
One in five respondents worked before or after their regular shifts, without pay.
64% of the lowest earners were not given documentation of their income and deductions.
Almost half, and completely illegally, have had deductions taken from their pay for “damage or loss, work-related tools, materials or transportation, or uniforms.”
In at least one in five restaurants in Los Angeles there is tip theft by the owners.
Nearly half of the workers who lead unionization efforts are illegally punished for their daring.
In many cases of work accidents, workers are not informed of their rights, especially those of the compensation system, which includes medical attention, payment of lost wages, rehabilitation costs and, in general, benefits for temporary or permanent disabilities. Consequently, only half of the employers paid any part of the medical bills.
Disrespect for fellow workers hits home especially those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder: immigrants, who are more than twice as likely as those born in the US to earn less than the minimum wage.
Low-income Latino families then experience the brunt of three blows: unaffordable rents and unaffordable housing; insufficient wages and wage theft in its various forms.
The consequence of these grievances on so many fronts is a consequent impoverishment of the working groups. From there, the road to homelessness, the loss of housing, is open.
One in five “homeless” in the United States lives in Los Angeles.
There is a direct relationship between wage theft in any of these forms and the increase in the number of homeless on our streets. Particularly those of color, women and immigrants.
A June 2023 study commissioned by California Governor Gavin Newsom shows the direct correlation: Homelessness is connected to the loss of sources of income.
A difficult reality that encompasses many workers who sleep in shelters, tents or cars due to wage theft.
In this situation, instability is the norm. It is estimated that in 2022, 59% of Americans were one paycheck away from losing their home, from not being able to pay for their necessities. This includes 65% of Latinos.
This is the central theme in the concept paper published at the beginning of the month by Los Angeles Worker Center Network (LAWCN), a coalition of nine worker centers and labor organizations.
LAWCN members include CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, Garment Worker Center, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance and Los Angeles Black Worker Center, Pilipino Workers Center, Los Angeles Restaurant Opportunities Center, Warehouse Worker Resource Center, UCLA Labor Center, and Bet Tzedek Legal Services .
The report also has proposals.
“This concept paper is first and foremost an invitation to city, state and county departments to collaborate with organizations like ours, through a memorandum of understanding (MOU), to initiate investigations of companies suspected of committing theft. wages”, says Armando Gudiño, Executive Director of LAWCN, in a telephone interview.
“This agreement would give our investigators the authority to enter a workplace and investigate complaints,” adds the activist. “It would solve a problem that afflicts these departments and that is that they are severely understaffed to be able to carry out their tasks.
So we want to work together, with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, the Department of Civil Rights, the Attorney General’s office, among others.
Secondly, we are seeking to implement an education model in which organizations like ours are contracted for outreach projects, which will make it easier to identify the main violators of labor laws.
Finally, we want to be appointed as researchers, all with the purpose that those who earn the least, who are those whom we represent, have the resources they deserve to be able to advance beyond their current jobs, in agreement with the authorities and with companies. ”.
“This is something important for the new generation of workers, especially in view of crucial events in the life of the city such as the World Cup in 2026 and the Olympic Games in 2028,” concludes Gudiño.
Indeed, a collaboration between elected officials, law enforcement agencies, labor organizations, local communities, and community media is required to carry out meaningful reforms at the city and county levels. With the participation of grassroots organizations such as LAWCN, a coalition created in 2017, and which in 2022 helped recover stolen wages of more than $3.6 million for home care workers, car washes, and restaurants.
Because the new shelters are not enough to attack the crisis of homelessness, let alone the practice of evicting them from a camp without giving them alternatives. Yes, some kind of housing solution is needed. But if we want a beginning solution for this evil that afflicts us and one whose manifestations is the amount of homeless, we have to act in all three directions. Los Angeles needs housing, a living wage, and strict enforcement of labor standards, but in tandem—by establishing a one-stop shop for wage theft claims while working on all other fronts.