Enforcing the Minimum Wage and Employer Sanctions

This article examines the interaction between the enforcement of the minimum wage and of employer sanctions—fining employers for hiring illegal aliens—in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles was selected because there is, proportionately, more immigration, legal and illegal, there than in any other urban county in the nation, and work in the secondary labor market has become progressively less well paid with the passage of time, two trends said to be intertwined. The roles of four groups of agencies are examined: unions, community-based organizations, employment standards agencies, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The expected interagency cooperation to raise wages for those at the bottom of the labor market was not found. Further, resources for enforcing the minimum wage turned out to be minimal, with social service agencies and foundations much more interested in a more fashionable, if less pervasive, labor market problem, namely, sanction-caused discrimination against foreign-appearing workers.