Strengthening California’s Car Wash Worker Law
The car wash industry in the United States has close to 17,000 establishments with 163,178 paid employees. Like other industries with predominantly immigrant workforces, employers in the car wash industry skirt minimum wage laws by paying workers in tips, keeping them on stand-by without pay, or paying per car and in daily rates. In 1999, a coalition of community groups and worker unions created the CommunityLabor-Environmental-Action-Network (CLEAN) Car Wash Campaign to address a growing need for long-term solutionsto labor violations reported by car wash workers. In response to the evolution of the car wash industry in recent years, CLEAN seeks to understand how the law has impacted the lived experiences of car wash workers in Los Angeles.
