Inspectors find dirt on books at Southern Calif. carwashes

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.

Despite many undocumented workers' reluctance to complain to authorities, employees at a fifth of Southern California's carwashes in the last five years have formally accused owners of illegally underpaying them, The Times found.

Gritty Car Wash?

they make it sound like the Gulag.

Caring for a car wash is:

Repairs.....unless they are too technical and we need outside help

Sweeping and garbage

Topping off soaps and waxes etc

Revenue sorting

Vending top off

Resets on machines

and dealing with happy or unhappy customers

It's not truly hard physical work except rarely and for brief duration but it can be tedious and customers can be such fun.

Sometimes it's unpleasantly hot or cold.

This sounds like a full service wash so those Mexicans are wiping down the car when it comes out of the wash and vacuuming and whatnot.

Beats digging ditches by a mile as far as hard work goes.

Wardaddy hires strictly legal folks for his car washes. Not that the illegals don’t constantly inquire...they always run away when I demonstrate the technologies we’re using that replaces a legion of towel-wielding aliens.

They must be assuming we here in the South are into the slave labor thing like Southern California. They thought wrong and I encourage them to keep moving whenever possible. They aren’t victims...not when I saw six little Hispanic kids climbing all over a large mower in Wally World yelling that they’re just like daddy. Six kids and he couldn’t have been a day over thirty. “Don’t worry, the government here will help!” All those anchors were dressed with finer clothing than the local tots.

Wardaddy saw a similar situation at the school his kids attends and proactively got the kids from lesser means properly outfitted. He did this because kids shouldn’t be subjugated to the prejudices that dominate the thinking of their elders (styles, fashions, tastes, etc.) when they need to be focused on learning.

If our government applies the rule of law to citizens while allowing those who shouldn’t be here to skid sideways we no longer have a workable civilization.

I’ll vote McCain but I’ll fight his masters just like I fought the Bush family. Third World is not our responsibility and shouldn’t be supported by the working families of America. Kick the illegals out and eat ice cream while perusing all the media sob stories about it. We didn’t buy the “we’d collapse without them” BS and we’re not shedding a tear for the law catching up to them. I DO regret that our enforcement sucked so bad for so long that everyone South of our border regards America as a soft touch.

So - we do not post bilingual signage so long as those requiring it throw trash on the ground while two feet from a provided trash can. I see this consistently and it tells me that the illegal aliens, as a group, regard our country a thing to be used and abused while not giving their neighbors any consideration whatsoever. I retaliate with civility and educational snippets while prepared for anything.

Sounds like Wardaddy car washes are not the kind that need a Mexican village worth of towel jockeys to dry off the cars. Car wash operations vary and in Southern California I guess they are illegal alien labor intensive

You missed my point that in So Cal the owners who employ the illegals are surprise surprise surprise......legal immigrants. And since they have no qualms hiring illegals you better believe they are cheating on taxes in this cash business.

Once more proving my point that so so often the employer of illegals is a legal immigrant. That’s how many get richer than the native born

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