Labor Officials to Probe Del Mar Track Pay Sheets

Federal and state labor investigators will examine Del Mar Race Track trainers’ employee records to determine if the 240 trainers have violated wage laws for the more than 2,000 workers who care for the thoroughbreds at the state-owned track.

Victor Rojas, acting state deputy in charge of the San Diego bureau of enforcement, said his investigators have the authority to demand pay records of track employees to check whether workers--U.S. citizens and illegal aliens alike--are being paid proper wages and overtime pay.

Earlier, demands by federal Immigration and Naturalization Service agents for workers’ employment records were rejected by the trainers, who hire and train the lower-paid workers serving as grooms and exercisers of the high-strung animals.

Two U.S Department of Labor agents accompanied INS and Border Patrol officers on a sweep for illegal aliens last Friday and interviewed many of the 123 arrested workers about their wages, said John Belluardo, spokesman for regional INS commissioner Harold Ezell.

Belluardo said that the INS had asked the wage division investigators to participate after receiving complaints that federal labor laws were being violated.

Robert Kelly, San Diego area director of the federal labor agency, was not available for comment Tuesday.

Ezell said, following Friday’s sweep, that there were “very apparent” wage and hour violations at the track.

Ezell said that one employer complained, “Where am I going to get two experienced men at $5 a day?” as Border Patrol officers led two of his workers away.

Trainers and track workers, however, said that Ezell was mistaken, that most of the stables pay their help about $250 a week on the average, and that more highly skilled workers earn $400 to $500 a week plus a 1% share of the winnings of the thoroughbreds they handle.

Several track workers interviewed by telephone Tuesday confirmed that they were paid above-minimum scale and worked less than 8 hours a day on a split shift of early morning and afternoon. None knew of any workers paid less than $200 a week.

Belluardo, however, said that “in the spirit of cooperation between federal agencies,” Labor Department officials were notified when the INS probe of illegal aliens working at the track turned up “ample evidence” of wage and hour violations.

Rojas said that state Department of Industrial Relations agents also interviewed a number illegal aliens arrested Friday and would conduct a full-scale investigation of pay policies to determine if state law was being violated.

State wage and hour laws are stricter than federal statutes, Rojas said, which would make it difficult for the two governmental agencies to combine their probes.

The state official said his main concern was getting enough manpower to check the records of the 240 trainers.

“It is a major job,” Rojas said, explaining that the San Diego office has only five investigators. Racing at Del Mar ends Sept. 11, leaving only two weeks before the thoroughbreds, owners, trainers and employees go to other meets at Pomona and Santa Anita.

If the state finds violations, it can order the employers to pay back salaries.