Car washes across California were hit with $771,050 in fines after a two-day crackdown by investigators from the state labor commissioner’s office. A total of 247 inspections produced 129 citations against 96 businesses, according to the Department of Industrial Relations.
Many of the businesses failed to provide workers’ compensation, resulting in $238,000 in fines. Businesses without worker compensation programs were also told to close.
Total fines against car wash companies in 2009 was about $3 million, according to the Department of Industrial Relations. That’s down from more than $3.8 million the previous year, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The industry’s labor practices first came under public scrutiny in 2008. An investigation by the Los Angeles Times that year found widespread abuse of the mostly undocumented immigrant workforce:
In Southern California, each carwash grosses an average of nearly $1 million a year, according to the Western Carwash Assn., an industry trade group. But legitimate operators typically run on 8% to 10% profit margins and sometimes struggle to make payroll, said Randy Cressall, a board member of the association and owner of Valencia Auto Spa in Valencia.
Operators who skirt minimum-wage and other laws — a minority, according to Cressall — make it tough to compete.
His association actually supports increasing fines as much as threefold so that they are not accepted as merely a cost of doing business.
“We still allow people to operate cheaper illegally, even faced with fines, than legally,” he said. “Large carwashes can save $5,000 or $10,000, at least, a month by not abiding by the law.”
[...] California Car Washes Fined More Than $770,000 for Labor Violations [...]