As California investigates businesses for wage theft, worker centers act as behind-the-scenes allies, helping convince employees to cooperate.

Annelisa Luong met with the Kome Japanese Seafood & Buffet employees in secret to talk about their sub-minimum wages and lack of overtime pay.

She convened clandestinely with cooks and dishwashers. Sometimes they met at a McDonald’s, other times at a transit stop and other times in workers’ homes.

“Here is an opportunity,” she recalled saying. “The state is investigating. You actually have the opportunity to speak up.”

Her efforts worked. Workers cooperated with the state’s investigation of Kome, a popular San Francisco Bay area restaurant, and in 2018 the labor commissioner issued $5.16 million in citations alleging wage theft by the employer. The restaurant ultimately closed, but its owners settled without admitting fault in August 2020, eventually paying $2.6 million to 133 workers.

The probe was the outcome of the state’s partnership with the Chinese Progressive Association, a San Francisco nonprofit that employs Luong and has organized working-class immigrant Chinese families for 50 years.

The investigation also is part of a broad strategy the state launched six years ago to work alongside 17 labor-friendly organizations, most of them worker centers — nonprofit community hubs that advocate for low-wage workers. The state calls its collaboration with the groups the California Strategic Enforcement Partnership.

Labor experts...

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