By BY JEANNE KUANG AND LIL KALISH | CalMatters
It took two shifts to clean the five-story central Los Angeles office building where Edith Lopez worked as a janitor.
From morning to dusk she vacuumed, wiped down kitchens and took out trash, and her employer, Pacific Commercial Co., paid her like a regular employee. Then from 5 to 10 p.m. she did the same but Pacific classified her as an independent contractor and paid for those hours with personal checks that left out typical payroll deductions such as income tax or Social Security withholding, she said.
Over her eight years working for Pacific Commercial the company sometimes paid her late and cut her hours, she said, and she didn’t receive any time-and-a-half overtime premiums. Lopez, a single mother who emigrated from Durango, Mexico, fell behind on rent and worried about supporting her three daughters. A doctor warned the 52-year-old that stress was causing her blood pressure to spike.
In September, she got a break. She received $30,000 in restitution, the result of the successful criminal prosecution of her former boss, Moon Hyuk Hahn, by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office in partnership with the state’s Labor Commissioner, the California Department of Insurance and a janitorial industry watchdog group called the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund.
“It feels like retribution for the suffering that this company has put me through,” Lopez said. “This company has caused me to lose out on time with my family and...
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