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A former overnight janitor says fear of losing her job and fear tied to her immigration status kept her from speaking out for years about the conditions she said she endured while cleaning WinCo Foods grocery stores.
María Isabel Ramírez is one of the workers whose experiences are at the center of a class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against WinCo Foods and its janitorial contractor, Tec Services. The lawsuit alleges that the companies systematically misclassified janitors as independent contractors, resulting in California labor law violations, including unpaid overtime, denied meal and rest breaks, and other wage-and-hour protections.
The legal action was announced during a July 22 press conference, organized by the California janitors’ watchdog group Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF), where workers called for accountability.
“I was afraid they might report me to ICE,” Ramírez, an immigrant from Mexico, told Prism, “so I went along with whatever they asked me to do.”
The lawsuit follows an undercover Univision investigation into alleged labor abuses affecting subcontracted janitorial workers who cleaned WinCo stores overnight. The lawsuit seeks unpaid wages, overtime compensation, penalties under California labor laws, reimbursement for business expenses, and other...
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