Bill to Upgrade Racetrack Working Conditions OKd

A measure aimed at cleaning up labor and living conditions at California’s horse-racing tracks passed the Legislature on Thursday--a day after labor inspectors looking for such problems say they were rebuffed at a track two miles from the state Capitol.

The bill (AB 2760) passed the Assembly on Thursday, 56 to 6, after having cleared the Senate on Wednesday, 38 to 1. It now heads to the governor’s desk.

At stake is the plight of grooms and so-called hot walkers, who take care of racehorses but are not unionized, earn low wages and often live in substandard conditions in what is known as the backstretch.

The bill would require stable hands’ employers--horse trainers--to submit their payroll records for annual audits.

The measure would also give labor unions a means to organize what is a highly mobile, mostly immigrant work force. And state housing officials would be required to conduct annual inspections of living quarters at the racetracks before the state would allow races to be held.

“These workers are not protected by the National Labor Relations Act or the state Agricultural Relations Act,” Assemblyman Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), co-author of the bill, said Thursday. “We’ve got some of the most vulnerable employees in the state here, most of whom are Latinos. This is our attempt to protect them.”

But to defuse opposition from the racing industry, Wesson and other lawmakers included a provision favored by track and horse owners that would legalize Internet and telephone betting in California.

Horse-racing leaders say they are losing millions of dollars a year to out-of-state wagering operations that take bets on California races.

Also key to the bill’s passage, say supporters, was a deal hammered out by industry groups and labor leaders earlier this week providing a prescribed means for backstretch workers to join a union.

Although there was compromise in the Legislature, labor officials say they are encountering resistance in the field to a series of enforcement sweeps at racetracks. The latest alleged incident came this week during an unannounced inspection of the California State Fair, just two miles from the Capitol.

Labor officials said they interviewed 40 of the 200 Cal Expo backstretch workers who were at the track Wednesday and fined 10 of their bosses--horse trainers--$34,000 for maintaining inadequate payroll records and violating minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws.

But they also said the action was largely thwarted when racetrack operators wouldn’t allow inspectors in at first, and then warned off trainers and grooms by making a loudspeaker announcement before interviews were conducted.

“Trainers immediately told their workers they were done for the day and to leave the grounds immediately,” said Dean Fryer, spokesman for the state Department of Industrial Relations.

Officials at Cal Expo--a state agency--denied hindering the inspectors, saying the loudspeaker announcement was made solely for the inspectors’ safety.

“He was simply notifying the horsemen to take extra precautions for the public that was in and about the backstretch,” said Brian May, Cal Expo’s assistant general manager.