The bare minimum owed carwasheros

Car-wash workers like me — we’re typically called carwasheros — are among the hardest-working, and lowest-paid, people in this city. I work at the Main Street Car Wash in Queens, and I must put in 50 to 60 hours a week to support myself and my family, which includes my wife in New York who works part-time, my five children in El Salvador, and my 90-yearold father, who is frail and needs constant care, for which I pay.

My weekly earnings vary by season and can be anywhere from $150 to $400 a week, depending on my hours, which are sometimes unpredictable. They can be anywhere from 20 to 57 hours weekly. Even in a good month, I do not take home enough to make ends meet.

But I am not writing just for myself. I write on behalf of all carwash workers, an estimated 2,500 to 5,000 of whom work in this city. Most people do not know that we frequently do not get paid the minimum wage, which is set by law. That’s because the car washes are covered by something called the New York State Miscellaneous Industry Wage Order, which considers us tipped workers.

That entitles carwash bosses to claim a tip credit to get out of paying us what would otherwise be the legal minimum.

The tips we get are supposed to bring us up to the minimum wage, but it does not always work out that way. Tips might average from to $3 to $5 per car. Some of our customers are more generous; many don’t tip at all.

In New York City, the minimum wage for businesses with 10 or fewer workers is $10.50 an hour, and $11 for larger businesses. Because car washes are allowed to take a tip credit, our bosses can pay us as little as $7.95 an hour for shops with 10 or fewer workers, and $8.30 for businesses with more than 11 employees, meaning we must rely on tips to get us to what were are entitled to earn by law.

This system is unfair for many reasons.

First, not all our customers leave us tips, in part because they may not know we rely on their generosity to make the minimum wage. They assume we make minimum wage — or more — and feel that the price they pay to have their cars cleaned is already high enough.

Second, the tip-credit system is confusing to workers and even well-meaning owners. That’s because owners can vary which tip credit they claim any given week depending on business traffic, and they don’t tell us workers which one they are taking. As a result, we cannot predict our pay or, very often, tell if we were paid properly.

More importantly, wage theft is still a big problem in the car-wash industry, which is not well regulated. Over the years, owners have had to pay millions in settlements because of wage violations. That means carwasheros are among the most exploited workers in the state. While the owners raise prices every year, they don’t raise the wages. Some even want us to take pay cuts.

There have been many reports over the years in the news about owners stealing wages, either by failing to pay the minimum wage, refusing to properly pay overtime or illegally taking part of our tips.

We believe there is a way to fix this unfair system. This spring, I and other carwasheros have taken days off to go to Albany to appeal to senators and Assembly members to get rid of the tip credit, and simply require those who own car washes to pay us the minimum wage the vast majority of other workers get.

State Sen. Jesse Hamilton and Assemblyman Francisco Moya have introduced legislation that says car-wash owners must pay us the full minimum wage so we no longer would have to rely on the generosity of our customers to subsidize our wages — or the honesty of our bosses to pay us what we deserve.

This would finally make it easier for workers to know what we are owed, as well as simplify recordkeeping. It would protect us from wage theft and save the state millions in enforcement costs.

In the name of justice and fairness, my co-workers and I urge the Assembly and the Senate to pass these bills immediately. It is the right thing to do.