Former Employees Protest Marina Car Wash's Abrupt Firings

Former workers at the Marina Car Wash carried signs and called out to drivers on Lincoln Boulevard on Tuesday, offering car washes across the street from the shuttered business where they had been employed just last week.

Marina Car Wash fired its 30 employees Friday and announced it was closing. The workers offered waterless car washes for $10 in a parking lot across the street to raise money for the holiday season and raise awareness of what they say was a retaliation against workers organizing to join a union.

In October, Attorney General Jerry Brown , including Marina Car Wash, alleging that the owners denied employees minimum wage and overtime payments, kept inaccurate time records, denied workers adequate breaks and failed to pay people who quit or were fired.

"That's related, of course," said Betsy Estudillo, a community coordinator with CLEAN Carwash Campaign, a labor organization. "They're using this as an anti-union tactic."

She said her group has been working with the United Steelworkers and AFL-CIO unions to organize car wash laborers, many of whom are immigrants.

"We know the owners make tons of money," Estudillo said, denying the possibility that Marina Car Wash was having financial problems. Representatives of the car wash were unavailable to comment.

One of the Marina Car Wash workers, who gave his name as Hilario, said that there had been labor problems at the car wash for a long time. "I didn't want to complain," he said.

Now, he and his co-workers are looking for new jobs, just two weeks before Christmas, with an unemployment rate in the city hovering at 13.8 percent.

"I'm going to start looking maybe tomorrow," Hilario said. "For the moment, it's hard to find anything."