Probe Confirms Violations of Labor Laws at Del Mar Track

Preliminary results of a joint federal and state investigation of labor law violations by trainers at Del Mar Race Track show violations of minimum wage and overtime pay standards, according to state officials.

The California Department of Industrial Relations has issued more than two dozen citations to trainers involving salaries paid to several hundred stable hands, grooms and hot-walkers, most of them undocumented aliens from Mexico. Among the citations issued to trainers thus far are several for paying wages in cash without a properly itemized deduction statement, some for lack of worker’s compensation insurance, one for using child labor, and at least 20 for paying workers less than minimum wage and ignoring overtime pay.

In addition, various citations for minor violations, such as not posting payday schedules, have been issued. The most serious citations involve fines that range from $100 to several thousand dollars, based on the violation and its duration.

Officials said the investigation has now entered a new, more complex and time-consuming phase.

The next step for state and federal investigators is to review trainers’ employment records for the last two years, according to Roger Miller, Southern California regional manager for the department’s division of labor standards enforcement who is based in Los Angeles.

“We have to go over the time and payroll records and determine who was paid minimum wage and overtime and who wasn’t,” Miller said in a telephone interview. “We’ve requested all the records from individual trainers. Most are complying, but this is very time-consuming.”

Trainers who refuse to turn over their records voluntarily will be issued subpoenas forcing them to comply, Miller said. Depending on the circumstances, trainers could be forced to make restitution in addition to facing possible civil and criminal misdemeanor penalties.

The investigation is an outgrowth of an Immigration and Naturalization Service raid at the race track on Aug. 23. The INS arrested 123 undocumented aliens during the raid, although as many as 1,000 other undocumented workers had already fled the track after the INS warned that a sweep was imminent.

Reacting to complaints lodged by grooms, stable hands and other race-horse handlers, the state Department of Industrial Relations and the U.S. Department of Labor sent investigators to the track on Sept. 3 and 4. After interviews and an initial review of records, many of the preliminary citations were issued, said Richard Stephens, an Industrial Relations Department spokesman in San Francisco.

While it appears that there are several cases of workers being paid less than the $3.35-per-hour minimum wage set by law --including being paid for eight hours’ work when they actually labored many more hours a day--Miller said the most serious violations involve failure to pay overtime.

Specifically, many trainers, who are independent contractors, didn’t pay their employees overtime after working eight hours a day, 40 hours a week or on the seventh day of a work week, as required under state law. Most stable hands work seven days a week.

“Basically it appears there were violations where people were working a lot of hours and not getting paid,” Miller said. Some trainers tried to defend their practice of not paying overtime by saying their workers were salaried employees.

But under state law, the category of salaried workers--who aren’t subject to overtime provisions--is narrowly defined. For example, professionals, executives and administrators are exempt. In most cases at the race track, “the majority of people don’t qualify,” Miller said.

One of the problems facing investigators is that, in the cases where workers were paid in cash, there aren’t any written records to examine and the workers involved have returned to Mexico. But investigators hope to reconstruct records by comparing the number of horses under a trainer’s supervision with the number of employees a trainer would need to carry out his duties adequately.

Dan Smith, spokesman for the race track, said the facility is not involved in the investigation because its racing season is over. Many of the trainers cited for labor law violations, who are the focus of the on-going investigation, are now working at the Santa Anita Race Track, the next stop on the thoroughbred racing circuit.

A spokesman for the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., which represents most of the trainers, said from Santa Anita that the only official from the organization who could speak to the issue, Joe McAnally, was unavailable for comment Tuesday.