Speaking up for exploited workers
Don't be fooled by the colorfully framed family photos on Lilia Garcia's bookshelves, or the volume of Maya Angelou's poetry, or the collection of coffee mugs with cheery sayings.
Garcia is no mushy, stuffed-animal-loving softie.
Her tiny, windowless office is the command center for a long-running battle against outlaw cleaning companies that prey on low-wage janitors.
A butcher-paper matrix that covers an entire wall diagrams the web of contractors and subcontractors whose janitors mop the aisles and clean bathrooms for major retailers such as IKEA and Food 4 Less.
In this battle, Garcia is the jeans-attired general. The 34-year-old is executive director of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a watchdog agency modeled after labor compliance programs in the construction industry. Her investigators -- often former janitors -- visit the mostly immigrant cleaners in their homes, or secretly in the stores and restaurants where they work nights, to document abuses by their bosses.
Many of the fly-by-night firms that operate up and down the state pay workers $3 or less an hour, often in cash, skirting tax laws, workers' compensation insurance rules and other required benefits. Janitors who complain frequently get fired.
Trust fund staffers find those workers brave enough to come forward, collecting evidence used to wring back pay from illegal contractors and often working with state and local officials to bring complaints against offenders for labor code violations that carry fines of up to $10,000 per employee.
State Labor Commissioner Angela Bradstreet hails Garcia as a "passionate, delightful and effective advocate in fighting the underground economy."
In the last three years, the fund has helped win more than $26 million in back pay for workers from janitorial companies. And in November, as a result of the fund's work, the state labor commissioner held Safeway Inc. liable for wage and hour violations committed by one of the firms cleaning its stores and ordered the grocery company to pay $6,794.40 to one of that contractor's janitors.
That victory was particularly significant, Garcia says, because "the real decision maker is the one picking the irresponsible contractor . . . and they are no longer protected by the argument that 'these people aren't my employees.' "
Some 6,000 janitorial firms are registered as California businesses, according to state data, and Garcia guesses that at least three times that number are operating illegally.
