Hugo Soto-Martinez On Wage Theft: The Random Lengths Interview

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez co-authored the wage theft measure that passed city council on Aug. 12, culminating a 3-year process that began on Sept. 1 2023. As a long-time labor organizer with UNITE-HERE! Local 11 prior to his eleetion in 2022, he had a deep commitment to the issue, and shared his thoughts about it for our Labor Day wage theft story. Here we present them in their entirety.

Random Lengths: When did you first become aware of the problem of wage theft and how has your understanding changed since then?

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez: Working at a nonunion hotel in college really opened my eyes to how pervasive wage theft can be. When you first hear “wage theft,” you might think about someone being paid below the minimum wage. But a lot of the violations are much more subtle and much more widespread — workers being denied legally required meal and rest breaks, not being paid overtime or sick leave, or having hours they worked go unpaid.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that wage theft isn’t just a handful of bad employers breaking the rules. It’s a systemic problem that affects workers across industries and throughout Los Angeles.

RL: Here in the Harbor area, Random Lengths first wrote about wage theft related to port truckers, but the problem is far more widespread. How would you characterize the way it manifests in different sectors? And in different parts of the city?

Soto-Martinez: The way wage theft happens varies a lot from sector to sector, but the common thread is that employers take advantage of workers who often have the least power to push back.

In fast food, for example, more than 90% of workers in Los Angeles don’t know all of the rights and protections they’re entitled to, which makes it much easier for employers to exploit them.

In home care, many workers are immigrants who can be particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they may fear retaliation or deportation. And in the port trucking industry, a major issue is misclassification — workers being treated as independent contractors when they’re actually employees, and being paid per job rather than receiving the wages and protections they’re entitled to.

So the details vary, but the underlying dynamic is the same: employers are exploiting an imbalance of power, and workers are paying the price.

RL: In the city council discussion Tim McOsker said, “today’s action we’ll be stepping in where the state has failed us.” But you said that there were many parts of the original proposal that you wished were being voted on now, and that you hoped would be voted on in the future.

So, on the one hand, how has the state failed, and what will this set of changes do to address that failure? And, on the other hand, what has been dropped, and what are the prospects for adopting them in the future?

Soto-Martinez: The state is currently responsible for enforcing most wage and hour laws, but the reality is that the vast majority of wage theft goes unenforced. Workers can report violations and still wait years without seeing justice or getting the wages they’re owed.

What we’re doing at the City level is beginning to step into that gap. But passing stronger laws only matters if we have the capacity to enforce them. The next step has to be investing in more investigators at the Bureau of Contract Administration so that wage theft reports actually get investigated and workers can recover the money they’re owed.

That investment will more than pay for itself. Every dollar we put into enforcement can return many more dollars to working Angelenos who were illegally denied their wages.

RL: The extent of wage theft in LA is so staggering that two thoughts suggest themselves. First, it seems to reflect a broadly shared cultural ethos. Much like racial and gender discrimination historically, there’s a need for a cultural change. What can be done toward achieving that?

Soto-Martinez: Culturally, we absolutely need to change how we think about wage theft. Petty crimes like shoplifting and vandalism routinely make the nightly news, but wage theft can have an even greater impact on someone’s life. The difference is that it often happens quietly, and the people being harmed are the workers with the least power to fight back.

When someone from a worker, that can mean missing rent, falling behind on bills, or not being able to feed their family.

RL: Second, while this measure treats wage theft in a regulatory framework, wage theft is stealing. It’s a crime. Have you given any thought to criminal enforcement as potential future step, particularly for repeat offenders? Could this help with producing the sort of cultural change just asked about?

Soto-Martinez: When employers repeatedly violate the law, there needs to be meaningful accountability. Corporations have shown time and again that they won’t change their behavior unless there are real consequences.

RL: Wage theft has been around forever, but it’s only in the last 20, 25 years that people have started to be concerned and started organizing to end it. Who’ve been the primary agents in bringing about that change here in LA? What role do you see for them in the future?

Soto-Martinez: The worker center network has been absolutely critical to this work — organizations like the Black Workers Center, Filipino Workers Center, the Garment Worker Center, and more.

These are organizations led by workers and rooted in the communities most affected by wage theft. They’re the ones hearing directly from workers about what’s happening in their workplaces, organizing them to demand better, and helping develop solutions.

RL: While workers are the primary victims of wage theft, they’re not the only ones… Could you say something about these wider systemic harms, and what it will mean to lessen them?

Soto-Martinez: Wage theft doesn’t just hurt the individual worker. It hurts every business that is doing the right thing and paying its workers fairly, because an employer that steals wages can undercut businesses that follow the law. It also hurts our local economy because when workers don’t receive the wages they’ve earned, that’s money they’re not spending in their communities.