With Help From Friends, Unpaid Worker Demands Car Wash Clean Up Its Act

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6685/with_help_from_friends_unpaid_worker_demands_car_wash_clean_up_its_act/

Thursday Nov 18, 2010 4:37 pm

By Andrew Oxford

CHICAGO—Luis Perez says he was a 15-year-old in Mexico when he first stood up to his boss for unpaid wages. Decades later and a few months after leaving his job at Superior Car Wash on Chicago’s north side, he stood up to his boss one more time.

As part of the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft, members of the interfaith labor group Arise Chicago and other workers' rights organizations, marched to the car wash and joined Perez in demanding $5,000 in unpaid wages.


Arise Chicago's Jose Tafoya protests outside Superior Car Wash on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010. (MEGAN COTTRELL/The Chicago Reporter)


Perez‘s $5,000 is just a small part of the $7.3 million dollars employers skim off their workers' paychecks each week in Cook County, according to a report from the University of Illinois at Chicago (PDF link). Perez also claims he worked 12-hour days at the car wash, sometimes for seven days in a row—a violation of the Illinois One Day Rest in Seven Act.

“The abuse is so flagrant it’s a pretty easy story to tell. It’s standard industry practice,” says Jacob Lesniewski, an organizer with Arise Chicago.

Workers currently employed at the car wash back up Perez's complaints that they are overworked and underpaid. These workers, however, who scrub down luxury cars in a chilly garage for $4 an hour, are without recourse in a sector that relies on immigrants and typically pays under the table.

FULL story at link.