California Labor Lawsuit: Help for Latino workers

Los Angeles, CACalifornia labor law plaintiffs have just received a great boost from activists.The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and civil rights lawyer Bill Lann Lee announced May 16 that they are both joining a California labor law class action filed by more than one thousand construction workers, most of whom are Latinos, for unpaid wages.

Millions of dollars at stake
The lawsuit, originally filed by the Sullivan Taketa law firm, seeks to recover millions of dollars in wages owed since 2002, from defendants Masco Contractor Services and its California subsidiary Schmidt Insulation Contractors Inc., operating under the name Paragon Schmidt Building Products.

Masco is one of the largest residential insulation, gutter and fireplace installation companies in America. It is alleged that Masco and its local construction companies did not always pay workers for their time on the job site, and required workers to reduce the time recorded on their time cards.

If you don't like it you can quit...
Los Angeles born Daniel Gutierrez, the 29-year-old lead plaintiff, was hired by Paragon Schmidt in January, 2006, to work for $8 an hour. He says he and other workers were paid as little as 5 hours wages for 10 or 12 hours work. At times he says he had to report to work at 5:30 a.m. to the company yard in Valencia, and then travel to worksites as much as five hours away—yet this travel time was ignored and uncompensated by the employer.

When he eventually complained to the bosses, he was told: "If you don't like it, the doors are wide open and you can leave."

Gutierrez says his co workers were reluctant to complain, because of:

• Distrust of the U.S. legal system


• Lack of citizenship


• Discomfort with the English language

Mr. Lee adds three more reasons for Latino workers' reluctance before this to take action against employer abuse:

• Fear over immigration status


• Ignorance of their legal rights


• Desperation for jobs

"We were expected to arrive early and load Masco's trucks at the company yards. We weren't paid for that or for all of our time traveling to the job sites and setting up the equipment for work," says plaintiff Arturo Navarrete. "We also didn't get paid for all our time traveling back to Masco's yard and doing the unloading work. We just want to be paid for all the hours spent working for Masco."

Workers' action long overdue
MALDEF's Los Angeles Regional Counsel Annabelle Gonzalves says, "California law protects the basic right of all employees, including Latino workers, to an honest wage for an honest day's work. By asserting their legal rights to fair treatment, these workers are making the statement that they will no longer tolerate the blatant exploitation of their labor."

"The significance of this case is that Latino workers have stood up to vindicate their right to be paid fairly for their work," says Mr. Lee, who was at one time Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Justice. He adds, "Latino workers have filed very few wage and hour cases despite the fact that they are such a large proportion of California's workforce. This case is long overdue."

Masco, which has net annual sales in excess of $12 billion, calls the allegations groundless, and says it will fight the action vigorously.

For its part, Sullivan Taketa says it asked the civil rights activists to join the action because it needed their extensive experience with class actions and with legal cases involving Latinos in order to take on such a large corporation.

Class actions were developed in the 20th century as a way for the courts to manage multi-party, complex litigation. A class action offers a chance for many small plaintiffs to band together, hire one lawyer and take on a large defendant on a more even playing field.