In summary
The state said the case against Playa Vista would be the largest wage theft payout by a California car wash. Years later Antonio Dominguez and dozens of other car washers have yet to see any of their unpaid wages.
Antonio Dominguez had never seen a car wash before moving to Los Angeles from Mexico in 1997. As a 24-year-old day laborer, he’d walk home each day, stop along a palm-lined boulevard and watch a team of mostly Mexican workers sponge, rinse, dry and polish a line of cars.
He was charmed by the waiting customers who seemed pleased with how their vehicles were left gleaming. And he simply loved the cars. In his Mexican hometown, there were few paved roads and cars were luxuries. “I just wanted to touch those cars, those new cars,” Dominguez said. “They came out so pretty.”
Dominguez worked five years at his first car wash job, earning only cash tips, and then was put on the payroll, though his weekly check often didn’t pay him for all of his hours, he said.
In his next job, at the Playa Vista Car Wash in Culver City, sometimes Dominguez and the other workers were told to wait in an alley for hours, uncompensated, or they were sent home with no pay, he and the state of California have said.
In 2019 the state Labor Commissioner’s office found Playa Vista had short-changed Dominguez and 63 other workers in wages. It said it was fining the company more than $2.3 million in wage theft violations and penalties, its largest fine ever issued against a car wash...
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