Laundry Workers Get Hahn’s Help in Living Wage Suit

Lining up beside organized labor, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and three City Council members Thursday announced their support for laundry workers suing the nation’s largest uniform supply company for allegedly violating Los Angeles’ living wage ordinance.

Employees of Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp., backed by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, or UNITE, allege in a lawsuit filed last month that Cintas did not pay its workers the mandated wage. They are seeking years of back pay.

Cintas, which employs more than 27,000 people at 365 facilities nationwide, held a $2.77-million contract until last year to provide laundry services to the city Department of Water and Power.

But a group of 10 workers at Cintas’ Whittier plant who worked on the DWP contract allege that they were paid in some cases more than a dollar less per hour than the $8.53 hourly wage mandated by the city’s 1997 living wage ordinance. The ordinance requires some city contractors to pay their employees more per hour than the state’s minimum wage, which is currently $6.75 an hour.

“They never told us how much they were supposed to pay us,” Cintas worker and plaintiff Alicia Aldrete said through an interpreter after a rally Thursday on the steps of City Hall. “It’s very unfair.”

Cintas has not responded to the lawsuit. But company spokesman Wade Gates said Cintas stands by its contracting practices. “We believe we pay fairly and follow all the applicable laws,” Gates said.

June Gibson, who oversees enforcement of Los Angeles’ living wage ordinance, said Thursday that city officials determined several years ago that the contract was not subject to the ordinance’s requirements because Cintas employees did not work on the contract for enough hours each month.

But UNITE spokesman Jason Oringer said the union had extensively researched work done by Cintas employees and was confident that the contract was subject to the ordinance.

UNITE and Cintas have been in a nationwide struggle for the last year over the company’s labor and wage practices. The garment workers union, which has been trying to organize Cintas employees, has filed several lawsuits against the firm. And the company is suing to overturn a living wage ordinance in the Bay Area city of Hayward.

UNITE representatives said Thursday that the only issue in Los Angeles, however, was wages.

Aldrete, a 49-year-old immigrant from Mexico, said she and her co-workers always knew they were not getting paid very much. But she said most had few options. “There are not many jobs out there. And it’s hard to find them,” Aldrete said.

Hahn told the downtown rally that Los Angeles would not allow companies to flout local regulations requiring city contractors to pay their employees a “living wage” several dollars higher than the state-mandated minimum wage.

“We passed this law because the city of Los Angeles wants to be an ethical contractor,” Hahn said of the living wage ordinance. “We expect people who contract with us to do the same.... They’re going to have to pay the wages.”

But the mayor did not say whether he would direct city staff to look further at the contract to reassess whether it was subject to the ordinance.

The rally was the mayor’s second appearance in as many days at an organized labor event. On Wednesday, he attended a rally in downtown Los Angeles in memory of Cesar Chavez. Hahn was joined Thursday by City Council members Eric Garcetti, Martin Ludlow and Jan Perry.