After a six-month drive in New York City, workers at a Queens car wash have voted to join a union. Twenty-one of the twenty-six workers voted to join the union, which will begin negotiations with the company. Over a dozen of the workers filed a lawsuit in July alleging that the company had been violating labor laws for six years, including paying less than minimum wage and not paying overtime. Organizers say that the car wash industry is hard to organize, with few workers at each location, many of them immigrants, but that the industry is full of companies violating workers' rights. A similar organizing drive has been taking place in Los Angeles, where several companies now have collective bargaining agreements.
See "Employees at a Queens Carwash Vote to Join a Union", Kirk Semple, The New York Times, September 9, 2012