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Alexandra Suh is an organizer and the executive director of Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, and she speaks regularly with workers from the restaurant and retail industry in Los Angeles who come to her organization for support.
Photo: Samanta Helou Hernandez
“We tend to think of it as a bad apple in a barrel,” Suh said. “But it’s actually the entire barrel that is rotten. Many low-wage industries are predicated upon a business model that relies on systemic wage theft.”
And at private companies, where 94% of workers nationwide are not in a union, the main protection workers have are labor laws and public enforcement — but experts note that there will never be enough resources to enforce the law at every worksite.
Janice Fine is a professor at Rutgers University, where she studies labor law enforcement. Her work has found that the reactive, complaint-based model — in which the state responds to an individual worker’s complaint — is often not a good fit for the complexity of the modern-day economy.
There is a real mismatch,” Fine said, “between a 20th century model of regulation and 21st century firm and industry structure and strategies.”
Fine says there are simply too many American workplaces, workers and complaints for these inspectors to fully monitor their business compliance with labor laws. According to public data analyzed by CalMatters, complaints in California that aren’t dropped or settled take on average three times longer than the legal limit of 135 days to resolve.
Fine also says that government needs to be more strategic about enforcing labor laws in ways that will encourage employer compliance and lead to broad industry change in the long term.
How Employers Evade Proper Payment
Domingo Avalos worked for XPO Logistics for over 10 years and was classified as an independent contractor during that time.
“They have classified us as independent contractors so they can deny us benefits we are owed as employees,” Avalos said.
In 2016, Avalos filed a wage claim with the Labor Commissioner’s Office detailing, among other things, 11-hour workdays, six days a week, for which the company neither paid the minimum wage nor provided meal or rest breaks. In 2017 he was awarded over $170,000 in unpaid wages, interest and other expenses.
“The fight itself is worth it because of the changes that I’ve been able to see at work, for myself and for future workers,” Avalos said. “My children and my grandchildren will be proud.”
The piece-rate system is another common shortcut companies use to save on costs and circumvent minimum wage laws.
“A [garment industry] factory owner paid by the piece, which could be as low as two cents a hem, three cents a collar,” said Marissa Nuncio, the director of the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles. Workers had to sew hundreds or even a thousand pieces a day to earn something substantial. Nuncio said workers were averaging under $6 an hour, far below the minimum wage.
Organizing by a coalition of worker leaders, ethical fashion businesses, the Garment Worker Center and community groups led to a new law passed in 2021 that made the piece-rate system illegal in California and made brands liable for wage violations. Yet the practices continue.
Workers are now partnering with the Labor Commissioner’s Office to make sure employers and workers know about the new law and can enforce it.