L.A. employers violating labor laws, UCLA study finds

Employers of low-wage workers in Los Angeles are making an estimated $26.2 million per week by committing labor law violations, according to a recent UCLA study released Jan. 6.

This figure was taken from an estimated 645,914 workers in Los Angeles County who suffer from an average of $2,070 in losses per year, according to the study.

In December, a motion was sent to the Los Angeles City Council that would make low-wage theft a misdemeanor, said Victor Narro, co-author of the study.

Although employment violations are present in every city, workers in Los Angeles face especially high rates of these violations in comparison to other cities.

Nearly one-third of the workers sampled were paid less than the minimum wage of $8 per hour, and many workers also reported not being paid for overtime work, the study said.

Narro said he was already aware that these violations were occurring, but now policy makers will have concrete evidence to back up their claims.

Passing policy that would increase the enforcement of these labor laws was one solution included in the study.

“This is the first time we have compelling data from the workers themselves,” Narro said. “It demonstrates how prevalent the labor violations are in these industries.”

Narro has been working with advocates and policy makers to pass policies that would increase the enforcement of labor laws in Los Angeles.

Employers of low-wage workers often choose to violate labor laws because of the lack of labor enforcement systems put in place, Narro said.

Narro is also working in outreach, educating workers about how to handle situations of low-wage theft, he said.

Low-wage workers are not the only ones affected by these employers’ actions. Employers who follow labor laws are hurt because they cannot compete with those who become more competitive by following illegal business practices, Narro said.

“This will help us make a strong argument for a need for stronger labor protection laws,” Narro said.

The study included a survey in 2008 of 1,815 low-wage workers in Los Angeles. The sampled workers came from a number of industries, including hotel service, garment manufacturing and restaurant industries. This sample represented about 17 percent of the working population of the city.

This labor market study is the first to use special sampling methods to acquire data, said Ruth Milkman, a UCLA sociology professor and lead author of the study.

The method, called Respondent-Driven Sampling, lessens the risk of bias or influence by the researcher, Narro said.