Why This Garment Worker Wage Theft Case is a First for California
Criminal charges aren’t the only thing to have been filed against two Los Angeles-based garment business owners who were accused of underpaying their workers between 2017 and 2022 and then trying to cover it up.
The Labor Commissioner’s Office’s Bureau of Field Enforcement said Thursday that it has also issued notices of joint liability, amounting to more than $81,000, to HTA Fashion owner Soon Ae Park and Parbe Inc., for failing to provide workers’ compensation coverage for their employees. Parbe Inc., it said, had contracted with Park even after it was notified of her previous alleged wage violations, which included depriving her workers of the minimum wage or overtime despite toiling for more than 55 hours a week.
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Park was additionally cited for more than $70,000 for violating paid sick leave requirements, record-keeping requirements and the garment registration provision, while Parbe Inc. CEO Lawrence Lee was cited for $4,000 for failing to provide workers with written notice of their paid sick leave, $4,000 for violating record-keeping provisions and $200 for violating the garment registration provision.
Together, the citations totaled $161,738.
In early September, Park was charged with two felony counts of grand theft of wages from two different employees exceeding $950, one count of perjury by declaration and one count of procuring and offering false or forged instruments, while Lee was charged with three counts of perjury by declaration.
Prosecutors said that while Park and Lee had agreed to pay settlements to their former employees in 2018, they later perjured themselves in their Garment Manufacturers and Contractors Registration applications by stating that they had not been cited for or settled a labor code violation for unpaid wages by the Department of Industrial Relations. Lee also failed to declare Park’s sewing business as a sub-contractor in the same applications, they said.
In 2022, Park handed a forged Certificate of Registration document to a Department of Industrial Relations inspector during an investigation into her compliance with California labor laws, prosecutors added.
Under the Garment Worker Protection Act, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2021, contractors, manufacturers, and brand guarantors are “jointly and severally liable for the full amount of unpaid minimum, regular, overtime and other premium wages, reimbursement for expenses and any other compensation, including interest, due to all employees who perform manufacturing operations under this law.”
The case, the first filed by the district attorney’s new Labor Justice Unit, is a milestone one for the Golden State.
“This is the first time a garment manufacturer and garment contractor have ever been arrested for wage theft,” said Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower. “These employers not only abused their workers by paying them as little as $6 per hour but they also defrauded the system. My office will continue to work with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office to prosecute bad-actor employers who commit wage theft and gain an unfair advantage over law-abiding employers.”
