For the last eight months, the United Steelworkers have been fighting to unionize carwash workers in the Los Angeles area. Campaign leaders hope to improve working conditions, gain an increase in wages and put an end to other widespread abuses.
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Robertson Car Wash workers have picketed in front of the busy carwash in hopes of being one of the first carwashes in the area to unionize.
Among the more than 10,000 carwash workers, undocumented workers are the real targets of carwash owners’ abuse because they are the most vulnerable sector of the working class. These workers are forced to work under terrible conditions, and have few other options.
Many workers are paid $35 for a 10-hour day and some are only paid in tips. Many workers are denied lunch breaks and endure unsafe working conditions.
According to the New York Times, two-thirds of the 500 carwashes in Los Angeles violate workplace laws. The exposure of such extreme and widespread abuses in the carwash industry of Los Angeles has even forced bourgeois politicians such as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is no friend to workers, to speak out in favor of the unionization efforts.
The campaign has forced city officials to investigate the Pirian brothers’ carwashes, resulting in the jailing of Benny and Nisan Pirian for a term of one year due to minimum-wage violations.
Despite the workers’ campaign and media coverage, owners refuse to sign an agreement allowing unionization
Organizing workers in the service sector has become increasingly important as the capitalists have increasingly moved industrial work—typically heavily unionized—to developing countries in an attempt to break unions and increase the rate of profit. As capital moves to more profitable regions, such as South Asia and Latin America, union jobs are increasingly threatened. There is still potential for organizing and an even greater need, for that matter, to organize the service sector.
A union of carwash workers could fight for a contract to protect workers and serve as a real organized presence in the face of widespread abuses. The Party for Socialism and Liberation supports the struggle for the unionization of carwash workers in Los Angeles. Our ability as workers to organize and fight back is a powerful tool in our struggle to overcome the tiny minority of capitalist owners that live off the exploitation of our class, the working class. Stand up and fight back against the greedy, profit-driven carwash owners!
