Enforcing the Minimum Wage

Federal and state wage laws require employers to pay all workers a minimum wage. The federal rate is $3.35 an hour. The California rate is $4.25 an hour. It is against the law to expect workers to work for less, or to work solely for tips. Yet for more than a year, as Times staff writer Henry Weinstein discovered, one young man dried off cars at a car wash in Los Angeles and never saw a pay check. He earned only what he made in tips, which on some days amounted to less than $10 for a full shift.

Thousands share his plight. Many undocumented immigrants work for less than the minimum wage. They fear losing their jobs or, worse, being deported if they complain.

The young man who received only tips at the car wash and another worker recovered their back wages only after officials from the U.S. Department of Labor ordered the employers to pay up. Thousands of cheated workers will never recover unpaid minimum wages or overtime because neither the federal government nor the state government has enough investigators to do the job.

If the federal government gets wage complaints, federal inspectors investigate and enforce the federal rate. California officials who get complaints enforce payment at the higher state rate. Investigators help workers recover their money, but the number of federal wage investigators was cut during the Reagan Administration. Nineteen must try to do the work once assigned to 40 to cover the area that stretches from Garden Grove nearly to San Luis Obispo.

Despite their thinning ranks, federal inspectors conducted 6,000 investigations during the past fiscal year in six Western states. They found that nearly 43,000 employees were owed more than $15 million in unpaid federal minimum wages or unpaid overtime.

State officials collected more than $25 million in unpaid wages and overtime during the 1987-88 fiscal year. The cheating is widespread, according to the state labor commissioner’s office, but only 37 enforcement investigators look into complaints about wage infractions in Southern California. Their responsibilities, which also include investigating public-works projects and unlicensed contractors, involve an area that stretches from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara. Again, there are not nearly enough resources to deal with the massive problem.

Thousands of men and women work hard and long hours for less than the minimum wage at car washes, garment factories, construction sites, restaurants, electronics and furniture-manufacturing firms and at other menial jobs in California. They have little hope of ever being compensated fairly without much stronger government intervention.