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Two car washes in Los Angeles announced in late February that they would unionize, marking the latest victory for a long-fought campaign for immigrant worker rights. California leads the nation in both the number of establishments and employees in the carwash industry. Los Angeles’s auto-centric neighborhoods in particular are filled with carwashes that employ largely first-generation immigrant labor in dangerous conditions, and pay well below minimum wage, some paying their workers on tips alone. But an effort called the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which stands for the Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network – a coalition of labor, immigrant rights, faith, environmental and community-based organizations – is changing that. The two carwashes in South LA that are newly organized, will now join the United Steel Workers, part of the AFL-CIO. This means, they will earn $8.16 an hour, and sign a contract guaranteeing health and safety protections in the workplace, as well as grievance and arbitration procedures. Winning rights for the more than 10,000 workers at carwashes throughout Los Angeles, has been a decade long struggle, marked largely by lawsuits and legislation such as the Carwash Worker Law. Carwashes that were violating the law were targeted piecemeal, and fined tens of thousands of dollars. Now, the wave of unionization at car washes, which gained momentum late last year into this year, is adding to the effort for immigrant workers to gain labor rights.

GUESTS: Neidi Dominguez, an organizer with the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, and Felipe Villarreal, a former worker of Robertson Car Wash who was terminated on suspicion of union involvement.

Visit www.cleancarwashla.org for more information.

BREAKING NEWS: The California Labor Commissioner just announced that her office was suing three L.A. carwashes for more than $2 million. More information is available here.

Unionized Carwashes in Los Angeles:

Bonus Carwash in Santa Monica, 2800 Lincoln Boulevard, Santa Monica. Tel: (310) 399-5773

Vermont Carwash in South LA, 6219 South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. Tel: (323) 778-7100

Navas Carwash in South LA, 801 W. Florence Ave, Los Angeles, CA