Labor Officials Sweep Into 4 Racetracks

State labor authorities launched surprise sweeps of the stable areas at four California horse racetracks Wednesday and found widespread instances of workers being paid in cash and denied proper overtime compensation, officials said.

The enforcement action--historically targeted at the garment, agricultural and restaurant industries--is the first aimed at labor conditions at the tracks in more than a decade.

Inspectors from the state labor commissioner’s office as well as the U.S. Labor Department began looking at payroll records and interviewing the workers, most of them immigrants, about 9 a.m. at Santa Anita in Arcadia, Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Los Alamitos in Cypress and Golden Gate Fields near Berkeley.

Some of the more than 30 inspectors found minimum-wage violations, including a large number at Golden Gate Fields, officials said.

“These are significant problems we are finding,” said Dean Fryer, spokesman for the state labor commissioner’s office. “Throughout the different tracks, they are finding some minimum-wage violations, but that’s not as predominant as overtime violations and cash pay.”

The sweeps, expected to last two days, were prompted by a Times story in April documenting poor labor and living standards for the 4,000 people who take care of racehorses and often live in unsanitary, substandard conditions on the tracks’ backstretches, as they are known.

The workers, mostly grooms and hotwalkers, are not unionized. Some cook and sleep in small, deteriorating equipment rooms next to horses in the stables. They feed, saddle and bandage the horses, preparing them for races and tending them when they are sick.

The horse racing industry has long enjoyed exemptions from state working and housing standards that apply to other laborers, including farm workers. Late last month, however, the industry effectively lost its 13-year-old exemption from paying overtime to the backstretch workers.

And Wednesday, key lawmakers introduced legislation that would end other exemptions as well.

Assemblyman Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) submitted a bill to a state Senate committee that would allow union organizing in the backstretches, where such activities have been difficult because of the sequestered and transient nature of the work force.

The bill would also put stable areas under the jurisdiction of the state Employee Housing Act, enabling state officials to inspect the workers’ living quarters. Under the proposed law, track operators would have to prove that they are in compliance with state housing standards before they could get a license to hold a racing meet.

Horse racing is the only industry exempt from state housing laws, which establish minimum space, ventilation and safety requirements for employee living quarters.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to get done, and it’s going to take some time to fix all of this,” said Wesson, chairman of the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee, which oversees horse racing.

Co-authors of the bill are Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who heads the Labor and Employment Committee, and Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who leads the Housing and Community Development Committee.

Steinberg said that, as he sat through a six-hour Assembly hearing on backstretch issues May 11, he became convinced that grooms and hotwalkers lacked some of the most basic employee protections.

“It confirmed for me there is a major problem here, that for years this is an industry that has been unregulated when it comes to the backstretch work force,” he said. “There need to be basic standards, and no industry should be exempt from those standards.”

Bill Partly Aimed at Horse Trainers

The new legislation is partially aimed at horse trainers, who employ the stable workers. It would prohibit the trainers from intimidating workers who want to unionize, and require them to file their payroll records with the state Department of Labor Standards and Enforcement. If labor violations were uncovered, under the proposed law a trainer could lose his license from the California Horse Racing Board.

Trainers have long resisted unionizing of their workers. There are 800 licensed trainers in the state, ranging from major stakes winners to small-time businesspeople barely scraping by.

Ed Halpern, spokesman for California Thoroughbred Trainers, called the provision to turn over payroll records “overbearing and without precedent” and said the bill “seems to legislate unions into the horse-racing industry.”

He added that unions have not shown how they could offer more benefits to the workers than already exist, including health clinics, recreation rooms and a pension fund.

The legislation has gained support from the Service Employees International Union, which is attempting to organize the backstretch.

The bill is also aimed at track operators, who provide the stables and equipment rooms to the trainers and their employees. Norm Towne, president of the California Assn. of Thoroughbred Racetracks, said the track operators are aware of the problems in the stables and are working to fix them.

He said he did not think they would oppose the housing components of the bill as long as they were allowed time to comply.

“No one’s making an argument here,” said Towne, who has been involved in negotiations over the wording of the new bills. “It’s something that’s been brought to light and needs fixing.”

While the legislation has been worked out in Sacramento, the labor commissioner’s office has been holding meetings with trainers at Hollywood Park and Golden Gate Fields, which straddles the border of Albany and Berkeley.

Last week at the Bay Area track, more than 100 backstretch workers showed up at a private meeting between the trainers and the labor officials to complain about pay and overtime issues, said officials.

Until then the workers’ input had been largely absent from the debate because many were reticent, for fear of being fired, blackballed or deported, some say.

Nonetheless, on May 26, the state Industrial Welfare Commission voted to discontinue the overtime exclusion and give backstretch workers the right to be paid time and a half for work beyond 40 hours a week.

Officials say, however, that the action may be moot because they realized in March that the workers should have been paid overtime all along under federal law.

This week, as inspectors fan out across the state, the extent to which grooms and hotwalkers may be owed overtime will become clearer. The inspectors will begin auditing the payrolls after their initial inspections are done this week.

At Santa Anita on Wednesday, workers stood under trees next to the cafeteria, talking to authorities about their pay and schedules.

“There’s no system to punch in the time,” one worker told an inspector. “You just do what they want you to do.”

A 20-year-old groom said he makes about $250 a week for more than 50 hours of work. “They need to pay better and we need a day to rest,” he said in Spanish.