Horse Racing Is a House Divided Over Legislation

Dust rises languidly into the warm morning air in the stable area at Los Alamitos Race Course. Exercise riders return their mounts from the track to the barns. Grooms hustle fresh hay into the stalls. Trainers make phone calls from their cramped offices, doing bits of business well into the afternoon.

Not much has changed in 50 seasons of quarter horse racing at Los Alamitos. Mornings move at a leisurely but efficient pace in the tight-knit village far from the view of the grandstand.

But a new bill moving through the state legislature could change the way horse racing has operated for generations in California.

Legislation aimed at improving labor and housing conditions at tracks around the state has split the horse racing industry into two camps. On one side are trainers and others who oppose the bill. On the other are the backstretch employees, who will become unionized workers if the bill passes.

As at other tracks, trainers at Los Alamitos agree that conditions could be improved for grooms and other low-paid backstretch workers. After initially supporting the bill, the trainers now say it could threaten the racing industry in California, which took in $3.8 billion in wagers in 1999. Passage of the bill also could force some to leave the state in search of greener pastures, they say.

“We would stay and a lot of our owners would stay, but a lot of the others wouldn’t be here,” said trainer Charles Treece, who has worked at Los Alamitos in various jobs since 1974. Treece charges his owners $35 per day per horse, a figure he said would increase dramatically if the bill passes.

“Maybe their hearts are in the right place,” added Charlie Bloomquist, a trainer at Los Alamitos since 1968. “They think they’re going to help these boys. In reality, I don’t think it’s going to help. The [lawmakers] need to put on boots and a pair of jeans and come out and watch how we do things.”

Union leaders say the bill is necessary to protect backstretch workers. Because of exemptions in state labor laws, backstretch employees are among the few workers in California who can work seven days a week without receiving overtime pay.

The jobs are filled primarily by immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who earn less than minimum wage and live in cramped tack rooms adjacent to the horse stalls in the barns.

In June, state labor inspectors found violations of overtime, minimum wage and record-keeping laws. A more detailed report of their findings is forthcoming. Also in June, Assemblymen Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) authored the backstretch bill.

Stable hands include grooms, who clean, feed and prepare horses for races, and so-called hotwalkers, who care for horses by cooling them down after races. Workers, who number about 4,000 statewide, would join the Service Employees International Union.

A Times investigation in April found substandard and unsanitary living conditions at some of the state’s nine fairgrounds and six major tracks, including Santa Anita in Arcadia, Fairplex in Pomona and Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif.

“[At other tracks] they treat you bad; here it’s different,” said Jamie Morin, a 23-year-old groom who has worked for three years at Los Alamitos.

Morin lives in a small cinder block room next to the stables. There is room for a bed, a television, a radio, a microwave and a refrigerator. His clothing dangles on a rope strung from wall to wall. There is no heating, air conditioning or running water. Bathroom facilities are located elsewhere in the barn.

Morin isn’t complaining about his living conditions, though. He believes they are more than adequate when compared to those at other tracks. He’s worked at Fairplex and says conditions there are much worse.

“They don’t allow you to have anything in your room, only a bed,” Morin said. “You are going to go crazy with only a bed, you need [a television or radio] to be distracted [and pass the time].”

Morin, a native of Colima, Mexico, makes $350 a week and emphasized that his check is “always on time, it never fails.”

Gamaliel Deniz has worked as a groom at Los Alamitos for 14 years, 12 of those for Bloomquist. “It’s a good idea,” Deniz said when asked about a union being formed for backstretch workers.

Medical benefits are his primary concern. He believes a union for backstretch workers could help him and his co-workers obtain those benefits. He worries about becoming ill or getting injured on the job.

At Los Alamitos, grooms and other backstretch workers can turn to the Quarter Horse Benevolent Charity Foundation for medical assistance. The foundation is maintained by winning betting tickets that go unclaimed, and through donations. It employs a dentist, who offers low-cost services on Saturdays at the track. The foundation also has an in-house medical account set up with the Cypress Center for Family Medicine. Any medical assistance employees might need is provided and paid for through that account.

“For any medical reason they can go down there. [All they have to do is] show their [race track] license,” said Nancy Brookfield, who has managed the foundation the last 11 years.

Brookfield has sought the help of local physicians when trying to help the backstretch workers.

“The medical field has been wonderful to me,” she said. “I would not send these people to a doctor that I wouldn’t go to myself.”

Deniz knows he can turn to the foundation for help but says it often “takes a long time” to see a doctor.

The foundation also employs drug and alcohol counselors and a part-time chaplain who conducts services three times a week.

“I’m not saying things couldn’t be better,” Bloomquist acknowledged. But he worries that strict union rules would disrupt the way the work around the barns gets done.

“[The backstretch] is not an assembly line; a union shop wouldn’t allow such flexible schedules [for the grooms],” he said.

Bloomquist lets his employees work at their own pace, the way they want. Some come in earlier than others; they set their own hours.

“A union coming in here would absolutely disrupt something that has been working for a while. It works pretty good, it’s worked this way a long time,” he said.