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Eva Rodriguez has earned minimum wage at a Subway franchise in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles for more than a decade. She has stocked ingredients, wiped down tables, and served thousands of meals in the strip mall shop thats sandwiched between an optical store and a Mediterranean restaurant. Often, she worked 70-hour weeks so her family could afford the basics. Im not someone with a lot of money. I have to fight to eat everyday. I have to fight to have a place to live, Rodriguez said in Spanish. Only last year did she learn that she didnt have to labor under those conditionsa revelation that led her to accuse the franchises owner of violating numerous labor laws. Rodriguez claims her boss forced her to work under two names to avoid paying overtime rates, denied her sick pay, skimmed her tips, and threatened her residency status. She is seeking nearly $100,000 in back pay and punitive damages, according to a complaint she filed with the California labor commissioner against the owner, Amarjit Singh, known to workers as Ms. Happy. Ive been a victim of every kind of theft you can imagine, said Rodriguez, who is 58 and a grandmother of seven. Singh declined repeated requests to comment, including one made in a letter hand-delivered to her restaurant. Subway did not respond to requests for comment. While wage theft is common in low-wage industries, Rodriguezs case is particularly egregious due to the sheer scope of alleged violations, according to Daniel Rojas, one of the lawyers representing her. It is especially prevalent in industries with significant numbers of immigrant workers, like construction, healthcare, and food services, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2023, more than 1.5 million low-wage workers in California were victims of minimum wage violations, more than double the figure of just a decade earlier, according to a report from Rutgers University. Advocates say foreign-born workers like Rodriguez may now be at higher risk of exploitation. The Trump administration is leading a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that many say is threatening immigrant communities more broadly. They say raising awareness about existing worker protections may provide the best defense against a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment and workplace abuses. Early last year, an organizer with the California Fast Food Workers Union visited the Subway where Rodriguez works and invited her to join the union, a moment she described as a light from God that appeared on my path. That encounter made her aware of her rights in the workplace. Formed last February, the California Fast Food Workers Union is the first statewide fast-food workers union in the country, and is focused on raising wages and improving working conditions for the more than 750,000 fast-food workers employed in the state. Although Rodriguez has the backing of the union, she hasn’t had an easy time challenging her employer. She alleges that after she delivered a letter to her managers demanding proper pay and an end to the violations, Singh retaliated by reducing her hours dramatically. Rodriguez detailed her claims in the complaint she filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Subway, Singh, and Singhs company, Guardashan & Happy Inc. Over the course of three years, Rodriguez claims that she was denied nearly $54,000 in wages, most of which she attributed to thousands of hours of unpaid overtime. Though Rodriguez claims the wage theft has been ongoing for most of her time working at Subway, she is only seeking to reclaim three years of lost wages because the statute of limitations on earlier alleged violations has expired. But Rodriguez finds some of the violations that she alleges occurred before then to be particularly galling. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singh allegedly convinced Rodriguez to work more than 1,400 hours without compensation, saying the shop might otherwise close due to low traffic. During that same time, Singhs Guardashan & Happy Inc. received more than $850,000 in paycheck protection loans, restaurant revitalization fund grants, and employee retention tax creditsall designed to keep her business open and workers paid, according to the complaint Rodriguez filed with the California labor commissioner last August. Upwards of $300,000 of Singhs PPP loans have since been forgiven. Some of the alleged violations highlight the way in which even immigrants with legal residency are vulnerable to exploitation. After injuring her foot and back during a fall inside Subways freezer in 2023, Rodriguez filed a workers compensation claim to cover the costs of treatment. When Singh learned of the filing, Rodriguez was pressured to drop the claim, according to the complaint she filed with the California labor commissioner. Singh allegedly warned her that the federal government would investigate her, and once officials discovered she had worked under two names, her legal residency would be at risk, the complaint stated. Rodriguez eventually dropped the claim after Singh also allegedly offered to pay her $30,000 and arrange for her to have medical care. But after weeks without the promised treatment or funds, Rodriguez found a workers compensation lawyer and resubmitted the claim to the state. Millions of workers across the country regularly experience similar violations, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in illegally withheld wages every year, according to an Economic Policy Institute report. The average minimum wage violation in California as of 2015 amounted to about $3,400, a small fraction of Rodriguezs claim. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank also found that the countrys 32 million foreign-born workers were especially likely to be the victims of that crime. Kent Wong, project director for Labor and Community Partnerships at the UCLA Labor Center, said foreign-born workers are particularly vulnerable to wage theft because they are often unaware of their rights, either as workers or as immigrants. When workers are informed of their rights as workers, their rights as immigrants, theyre in a better position to exercise those rights. In nonunion workplaces where exploitation is rampant, they are much more vulnerable because they are unaware of their rights, Wong said. The California Fast Food Workers Union, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, has pushed for cities across the state to adopt mandatory know-your-rights training. In 2024, Los Angeles City councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Katy Yaroslavsky introduced a motion to direct the city attorney to draft an ordinance requiring employers to provide paid time off for fast-food workers to attend such training. The union has pushed for similar measures in Santa Clara County by launching strikes with the support of local lawmakers. (Disclosure: SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.) For more than a decade, SEIU has been seeking to organize fast-food workers into a union, securing significant victories along the way. Last year, it successfully pushed California lawmakers to establish a fast food council tasked with setting workplace standards and wages. The formation of the California Fast Food Workers Union earlier that year marked another milestone. But despite those gains, CAFFWU lacks the collective bargaining power of more traditional unions. With Trump as president, many fear working conditions for immigrant workers may become even more perilous. In early January, scores of farmworkers were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents during immigration raids in Bakersfield, California, sending shockwaves of fear through immigrant communities. Tom Homan, Trumps choice for border czar, has pledged to launch similar raids across the country and has directly criticized know-your-rights training. The Trump administration is now also seeking to expedite deportations for more than a million migrants who arrived during the Biden administration by denying them court hearings. We are entering a very dangerous period for immigrant workers, their families, and communities. . . . Many, many millions will be negatively impacted if Trump makes good on his promise to launch the largest mass deportations in U.S. history, Wong said. In the meantime, Rodriguezs newfound understanding of her rights and experience of working with the California Fast Food Workers Union have emboldened her. Im not afraid anymore because I have a union that defends me. . . . I am not fighting to win some money, I am fighting for my rights and the rights of all other workers, Rodriguez said. By Jeremy Lindenfeld, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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In a small section of Los Angeles’s Elysian Park, which spans the amount of land a single sprinkler head can water, a native plant experiment is underway that could change city parks for the better. It’s called Test Plot. Combining native plant species, volunteer gardeners, and a not insignificant amount of weeding, the experiment is trying to find a new way for urban parks to counter ecological degradation and improve climate resilience. The project launched in 2019 and is now underway in parks across California, and the approach is showing that with the right plants and the right amount of effort, parks can be brought back into sync with the natural tendencies of their environments. [Photo: Terremoto] An experiment to spur native, fire-resistant plant growth The idea came from the landscape architecture firm Terremoto, which formerly had an office just a few blocks from Elysian Park. “We saw that it was in need of some help,” says Jenny Jones, a landscape architect at Terremoto. Sections of the roughly 600-acre park were totally overrun by non-native species that crowd out more drought-tolerant, biodiverse, and fire-resilient species. The city’s overstretched parks department had been managing these issues through annual brush clearance, but the non-natives would always grow back, along with the risks they posed. “It clears for fire, but it also mows down every single native species in its path,” Jones says. “We wanted to just challenge the regime of maintenance that we were seeing in the park.” [Photo: Terremoto] In conjunction with a longstanding community group associated with the park, Terremoto approached the city about using the firm’s landscape architecture skills to try a different approach. They asked if they could run a small experiment, planting native plants and doing some active, volunteer-based gardening. The city agreed, with the stipulation that the project be temporary. [Photo: Terremoto] A way forward for more sustainable parks So in the fall of 2019 Terremoto hooked a hose to a water bib in the park, attached a sprinkler head, and started preparing a plot of land for a new kind of park planting. After a few rounds of watering and weeding, they planted dozens of one-gallon pots of native plants. Then, through regular maintenance and weeding sessions attended by a dedicated group of volunteers and enthusiasts, they simply helped the native plants thrive and stopped the non-native plants from moving back in. “We look to ecological restoration as a guide, but it’s not strict,” says Jones. “We lie somewhere between gardening and restoration.” Within three years the native plants fully established themselves, and no longer required watering, nor much weeding. This one plot, just 30 feet in diameter, proved that the park could be restored to a more sustainable and ecologically balanced state. [Photo: Terremoto] A 30-foot circle in a 600-acre park might seem like a drop in the bucket, but the idea has caught on. Terremoto expanded its Test Plot approach to other parts of Elysian Park and other parks across L.A. There are now about 15 Test Plots, including four or five that have fully established plants. By identifying degraded landscapes within parks, engaging with local groups already connected with those parks, and then asking city officials if they could temporarily intervene by adding native plants to those parks, they’ve been able to rethink planting and maintenance approaches at a larger scale. “There’s a little bit of figuring out how to pierce the bureaucracy and how to get around the otherwise really strict rules about engaging in that kind of work in public spaces,” Jones says. But in the urban context, parks departments often have to deprioritize planting and maintenance in the face of the social issues they also experience, like vandalism, drug abuse, unhoused individuals, and compromised public safety. A volunteer project like Test Plot is a welcome intervention. “[Parks departments] simply don’t have the budget to do what it takes to actually take care of a complicated urban park that faces intense urban problems,” Jones says. [Photo: Terremoto] Test pilot’s appeal for time (and budget)-strapped cities Test Plot is an appealing concept for parks who face such both budget challenges and the relentlessness of invasive species, and many across the state of California have allowed these interventions. Beyond half a dozen parks in L.A., Test Plots are adding native plants to parks in San Francisco, Berkeley, Daly City, Puente Hills, and Catalina Island. Interest in the approach has grown so much that it’s been formally spun off into a non-profit organization by the same name. Jones says the organization has received interest from parks groups across the country, including in Minnesota and Rhode Island. They are also being hired as consultants for new park projects, including a redesign of the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens that will feature an ethnobotanical garden created by the Test Plot organization. Jones says that a central element of all these Test Plots is community involvement. Volunteers are the backbone of the effort, and their ongoing engagement with the planting and weeding that Test Plot involves becomes a kind of reinforcement for the park’s vitality. “We have people come and they form a bond with their park in a way that they didn’t before,” Jones says. “A lot of people love their parks because they take their dogs on walks, it’s where they run, it’s where they walk with their friends. But there’s a whole new layer of bonding when your hands are in the soil and you are taking care of the land yourself.”
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Kendrick Lamar. Drake. Lady Gaga. The charts of music streaming services pretty much all look the same these days, with familiar names dominating the top spotsexcept on up-and-coming Spotify competitor Audiomack. The current No. 1 album on Audiomack belongs to Nigerias Seyi Vibez, whose hypnotic Afrobeats tracks have amassed around 1.8 billion plays on the platform. Vibez is one of many African and Caribbean artists who have found breakout success on the platform. Many of them consistently draw larger audiences on Audiomack than on Spotify or Apple Music, largely due to the platforms strong presence in local markets. We are the most-used streaming service in a large swath of Africa, says Audiomack cofounder Brian Zisook. We’re No. 1 on iOS and Android in Nigeria and Ghana. The company boasts 58 billion-plus songs streamed in Nigeria alone. Half of Audiomacks audience of 40 million monthly listeners comes from the continent. Audiomacks rise in West Africa was initially unintentional, but it has since become a case study in the potential of emerging markets and how smaller music platforms can thrive alongside industry giants like Spotify and Apple Music. From a mixtape hub to an Afrobeats force When Zisook and Dave Macli founded Audiomack in New York in 2012, they just wanted to make it easier for local hip-hop DJs to distribute their mixtapes. At the time, many DJs relied on questionable file-sharing sites, creating a poor experience for fans. Those websites were strewn with pop-up [ads] and malware, Zisook recalls. If you downloaded a mixtape, you had to worry that you were going to crash your family computer. Audiomack grew steadily in Western markets, but never really broke through against its much bigger competitors. All that changed seemingly overnight in 2019 when West African musicians and their fans began flocking to the service en masse. We just took off, Zisook says. The growth was a hockey stick. To adapt, Macli and Zisook hired a local team in Nigeria, gaining valuable insights into their new market. The mistake that so many in the industry made was to view Africa as a monolith, Zisook says. If you are in Tanzania or Liberia, nothing is going to offend you more than only being served Nigerian, Ghanaian, or South African songs. Betting on Africa as a growth market for music streaming is savvy, believes MIDiA Research senior music industry analyst Tatiana Cirisano. As Western markets reach saturation, most future streaming growth will come from Global South regions, of which Africa is an important part, she argues. It was smart for Audiomack to position itself as a key player here. Betting on Africas music boom Cirisano cautions, however, that business models that work in the West may not easily translate to emerging markets. African countries have a lower average revenue per user than countries like the U.S. and U.K., she says. Even though Africas impact on global music culture and consumption continues to grow, its impact on global music revenue is not matching that growth. It’s very difficult to monetize music in Africa, acknowledges Zisook. You have a young audience that has limited or no disposable income, and a lack of access to credit and debit cards. They pay for things online using gift cards. So there’s no opportunity for consistent subscriptions. There’s a lot of churn. They have hard capped data plans, and they have unreliable or no Wi-Fi. Audiomack responded to this by striking bundling deals with local cellphone carriers. The company also integrated alternative revenue streams for musicians: Fans can become direct financial supporters of their favorite artists on the platform, and in exchange get badges and bragging rights. Its a clever way for Audiomack to differentiate itself from the competition, Cirisano contends, noting, The traditional streaming business doesnt monetize fandom, or depth of engagementit monetizes pure consumption. Thriving alongside giants like Spotify Scaling a business works for streaming giants like Spotify, which recently reported its first full year of profitability. But it has been much more challenging for second-tier services like Tidal, which reportedly laid off 100 staffers last fall. Audiomack could provide a blueprint for these smaller services to compete with, and prosper alongside the big guys. In addition to further growing its user base in Africa, Audiomack also courts expats across Western markets. A lot of our growth in Canada, U.K., Germany, and France is diasporic, Zisook says. Ghanaians in Germany, Nigerians in France. At the same time, the company is striking licensing agreements with major labels to gain access to more of their catalogs. This attracts Western listeners familiar with hip-hop while introducing them to Seyi Vibez and other Afrobeats stars. That way, Audiomack can become a complementary service for Western audiences looking to dive deeper into different music genres. The same folks who listen to Spotify at work might use Audiomack later in the day to more actively discover music, express their fandom, and access a catalog that is not available on mainstream streaming services, Cirisano says.
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