(upbeat music) - We know wage disparities exist in the workplace, but wage theft is a harsh reality for Hispanic workers who dominate industries like hospitality, construction, domestic work, and caregiving, more so than you might think.

Without sufficient laws and regulations, some workplaces breed wage violations and unsafe conditions.

Hello, I'm Catherine Anaya.

In this special episode of "Horizonte," we're featuring a documentary film examining the issues of wage inequality within the Latino community in the Working Nation film, "The True Cost of a Car Wash: Latino Workers and Wage Theft."

The film delves into a Los Angeles program designed to help car wash workers get the pay they deserve, along with safe working environments.

The documentary is sparking the conversation that we wanna have about combating wage disparities for Hispanics right here in Arizona.

But first, here's the film.

(gentle music) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Luis continues speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo continues speaking in Spanish) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) - LA has the unfortunate title of being the wage theft capital of the United States.

And what we've seen is about 30% of workers in Los Angeles are not paid minimum wage.

That number balloons up to 80% when we talk about undocumented workers or workers in low wage industries.

We see wage theft mostly in garment, in car wash, and agriculture construction, specifically day laborers, domestic workers, and also within that realm, in-home care providers.

(Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) - Everybody is entitled to minimum wage, regardless of your status, regardless of the industry, even if you agree to accept less, you cannot.

- So we see that an undocumented Latino worker in LA is more than twice as likely as her US-born counterpart to experience wage theft.

- About 98, 99% of car wash workers are Latinos.

So the more people know about their rights, the better it is to make sure that they are protected.

(Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) - For car wash, I think there's a lot more information now in car wash thanks to the great work of the worker centers, specifically the Car Wash Worker Center.

(Flor speaking in Spanish) (Victor speaking in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) (Victor speaking in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) - A lot of the times, we would represent workers, win cases, and not collect any money.

And that is something that very much happens to a lot of low wage workers.

And luckily for car wash workers, when that does happen, they have the option of collecting from the Car Wash Restitution Fund.

So it encourages workers to pursue legal action because they know at the end of the day they will be able to collect.

(Victor speaking in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (bright music) (Flor continues speaking in Spanish) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Luis continues speaking in Spanish) - Thank you for joining us for this special episode of "Horizonte" and the presentation of the short film, "The True Cost of a Car Wash: Latino Workers and Wage Theft."

We'll get back to the film shortly.

We watched as workers banded together to implement a California law to protect car wash workers, and we heard from workers about unfair pay and health concerns.

Jacqueline Mendez Soto is an attorney and partner at Barton Mendez Soto Law Firm in Arizona who practices labor law.

Bill Ruiz is the Arizona representative for Western States Carpenters Local Union 1912.

He's also joining me for this conversation.

Thank you both for being here.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you for having us.

- So Bill, I wanna start with you.

You work with owners, developers, and elected leaders to advocate for high standards of living for all workers.

If, as the film says, LA is the wage theft capital of the US, where does Arizona compare to that?

- Arizona comes in a very close second because of the huge influx of migrant workers that work here in our workforce.

And so what we do is work with developers to work under collective bargaining agreements to guarantee their wages and work with state and local officials, for instance, the Arizona Department of Safety and Health, to guarantee job safety standards on those jobs.

- And Jacqueline, would you agree with Bill?

- Correct, I think we're pretty high up there.

Arizona is pretty high up there on wage theft as well.

Just reviewing the Department of Labor, the US Department of Labor's website on the awards they've obtained just for 2024 alone, it's over $12 million.

If you just add the press releases for 2024 of unpaid wages that the US Department of Labor have found in favor of employees, it's over $12 million.

- Yeah, it's incredible.

And describe for me, if you will, how workers here in Arizona are being paid under minimum wage, how is that happening?

- There are several tricks, if you will, that some employers utilize to pay less than the minimum wage, sometimes unknowingly, but sometimes intentionally.

And that could be in a series of ways such as, for example, misclassifying workers where they will classify an employee as an independent contractor and pay them, say, a flat rate or a piece rate as an independent contractor.

And if you divide that by the number of hours that they worked, they could have ended up earning less than the minimum wage.

So that's a minimum wage violation.

Other manners in which they may do this is by not paying them overtime.

And so Arizona doesn't have its own overtime law.

We rely on the Fair Labor Standards Act for overtime.

So if an employer makes an employee work over 40 hours and keeps paying them the minimum wage, they are not only violating overtime laws, but at this point, they've ended up paying them less than the minimum wage.

- Bill, are you seeing this same thing happen with the folks that you are interacting with?

- Yes, she hit it right on the head.

Misclassification is the big one.

And for instance, when you utilize union skilled labor workforce, there's certifications that go with the training that they receive.

If a contractor is not using a certified worker on their project, they simply make them as an independent contractor.

One day they're an electrician, one day they're a ditch digger, one day they're hanging drywall.

So that's how they get away from that.

They put them under a 1099 independent contractor kind of a setting and just let them do the work.

And then I'll also add that another type of theft that goes on is if the work gets flagged at inspection, oftentimes the people that perform that work will have to repair it on their own dime.

And so the contractor is absolved of everything.

- So Jacqueline, what recourse, legally speaking, do these workers have?

- They have a couple of options.

If their unpaid wages are $5,000 or less, they can go to the Arizona Industrial Commission with the Labor Department and file a wage claim there.

Unfortunately, Arizona, part of the reason why we don't have statistics is because we do have that cap on state recourse.

So if the wages owed to them are less than $5,000, they can go to the Industrial Commission.

If it's beyond that, they can go to the US Department of Labor, the wage and hour division, and file the wage claim there.

In Arizona, they are also able to bring their own private lawsuits.

So even if it's for less than $5,000, they can retain a lawyer and file a lawsuit for their unpaid wages.

And at that time, they can collect not only their unpaid wages, but liquidated damages as well, which could be two or three times depending on what law they're bringing it under, whether it's the state or the federal law.

- Thank you for that.

Latinos, many of them are learning their rights in the workplace as we return to "The True Cost of a Car Wish: Latino Workers and Wage Theft."

The film explores how programs are providing resources and education to empower Hispanics to become entrepreneurs and reclaim their rights.

(gentle music) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) (Flor continues speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (Flor continues speaking in Spanish) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) (group conversing in Spanish) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) (Flor continues speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) (customer speaking in Spanish) (Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) - I think as a customer, one of the things that we can do is think about where we spend our money, and the way you spend your money, you're basically voting on the working conditions of the people where you're taking your car to get washed.

(Rodrigo speaking in Spanish) (Luis speaking in Spanish) (gentle music) (Luis speaking in Spanish) - Growing up, you're little, you don't really understand what's going on.

Just, we always knew he would come home late at times and like know he was tired.

(Luis speaking in Spanish) - He set, what's the word, just the bar for like the work ethic that I've just been like trying to follow.

I've seen like the weather, like right now, it hits those high 90s, and I know for a fact he's out there in the sun working hard so that he can provide for us and just help support our studies.

Specifically mine, at this point, I'm the final, I'm the last child who's... Go on and finish college.

And yeah, it's a blessing to have.

(Luis speaking in Spanish) - I've grown to value him a lot.

He's my everything, but overall, I know that when I graduate next year, hopefully, I'll be thankful for him because it's gonna be all his sacrifice that taught me to grow as a person, but also to continue pushing forward and for a better future.

(bright music) (Flor speaking in Spanish) (Flor continues speaking in Spanish) - There are plenty of takeaways from this very impactful short film.

Jacqueline, you are very passionate about worker rights and the Hispanic workforce, as are you, Bill, but Jacqueline, in particular, as the daughter of a farm worker, this issue is very close to home for you, right?

- Correct.

Before going to law school, I worked for the National Labor Relations Board, and I learned through there that farm workers don't have the right to unionize.

They're not covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

And since then, then becoming a labor and employment attorney, I also learned that farm workers don't have a right to overtime either.

They're also exempt from overtime requirements.

They still have a right to minimum wage though, and if they are not paid minimum wage, even if they're paid a piece rate, they still are entitled to minimum wage.

And that's what makes me passionate about the agriculture worker specifically because of my background in advocating for them, even though they do actually have less rights in the labor workforce when compared to other employees.

- Well tell me a little bit about what laws are on the books here in Arizona to protect these workers, and do they know enough about their legal rights?

- I do not know how much they know about their legal rights.

We do know that per state and federal law, there are notices that have to be given to all employees, and they apply to agriculture employees as well.

And that those notices include their right to minimum wage, and they should know what the minimum wage is.

They also have a right to be notified about earned paid sick time, and that also applies to them.

So all of the laws that are for worker safety and minimum wage apply to them.

And the employer should be providing that notice to them as required by law.

And other than that, there are other places that workers can turn to in general, worker rights centers.

I believe there's one out of the University of Arizona, and then, specifically for farm workers, there's the United Farm Workers Unions, and I believe there's Farm Workers Justice, also another organization that briefs them on their rights.

- What can you add to this Bill in terms of who advocates for these workers and where can they go for resources?

- Well, one of the things that we've been advocating for is we've come alongside with Attorney General Mayes.

She created a task fraud task force, and it's linking a lot of multi-jurisdictional agencies that we can use to go after these bad actors, the registry of contractors, Department of Labor, Arizona Department of Revenue.

A lot of times, the places that we have those discussions with with those workers are simply right on the job site talking to us, representatives of the union.

And we then in turn take that information to the Attorney General and they begin the investigation.

- So the laws that Jacqueline just talked about, are they being enforced enough?

- There's a lot of enforcement definitely going on, but the thing is that it's just so wide and so massive, and this is happening everywhere.

In our industry alone, I would say upwards of 98% of what you see out on the residential market is being dealt with in this way, 1099, and a lot of under-reported wages.

- What would you say are the industries in Arizona that are most impacted by wage theft?

- We're seeing it a lot in the construction industry, but in particular, I think the area that we can really spot where this is happening is anything where there's contracting, third party contracting.

You can hire a company to come and vacuum your rugs, and the person that shows up is not actually an employee of that company, they're a third party.

And so that's where I think it gets really, really sketchy.

I wanna thank our guests, Jacqueline Mendez Soto and Bill Ruiz, for this pivotal discussion.

We have a long way to go before everyone gets fair wages, and it's going to require that people know their rights and demand that their state lawmakers put laws in place to protect them.

We will continue to have significant conversations like these because they matter to you and the Latino community.

I'm Catherine Anaya.

Thank you for watching this special edition of "Horizonte."

(upbeat music) (singer singing in Spanish)