A Multimillion-Dollar Payday, at the Carwash

Wage-theft cases are notoriously hard to prove, and they almost never pay out. But for some of the most marginalized laborers in the city, justice was served.

By Tracy Tullis
Feb. 22, 2019

Before J.V. Car Wash closed for good, it was open all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Workers put in 12-hour shifts, sponging, drying, and waxing the cars, cleaning the wheels, and vacuuming the interiors, six or even seven days a week.

They worked in frigid and searing weather, were expected to use harsh chemical cleaners without gloves, and endured abuse if they took a few minutes to rest.

For all this, the employees were paid about $50 a day, roughly $4 an hour. Complaints about low wages were ignored. “The manager would say, ‘If you want to work, then work,’” Juan Remigio Licona said in Spanish. “‘If you don’t want to work, you can go.’”

Two workers, Marcos Díaz and Giovanni Paulino, had logged eight years between them at the carwash when they concluded they did not want to work under those conditions and sought the advice of a lawyer. Both were immigrants from the Dominican Republic who had an imperfect command of English and an imperfect understanding of their rights under U.S. labor law. But in 2011, against long odds, they filed suit against their employer, alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and state labor law.

The case against J.V. Car Wash (and its sister locations) took some unusual turns, as the carwash owner, José Vázquez, contrived a series of bizarre claims to undermine the workers’ lawsuit. But the really surprising twist to this unlikely story: the carwasheros, as they call themselves, won. By the time the last checks are dispersed this summer, almost eight years after the suit was filed, the 106 workers who eventually signed on as plaintiffs will have received a share of roughly $8.5 million — a spectacular sum for a wage theft case.

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