Employment

Promoting Fair Employment Practices

First, MALDEF seeks to end discrimination in entry-level hiring and in opportunities for promotion on the basis of race/ethnicity, and in cases where the discrimination stems from additional factors – for example, gender identity or sexual orientation. We place particular emphasis on occupations that have high impact on Latino communities, such as law enforcement and teaching.

Examples of our work in this area include an employment discrimination suit filed against a northern California market where Latino employees were subjected to threats and anti-immigrant rhetoric in months leading up to the November 2016 election, and a multi-million dollar post-trial verdict on behalf of three Latino police officers in Westminster, a Southern California city where tensions between the city and the Latino community are high.

Second, MALDEF fights for fair compensation and working conditions in occupations and industries with large numbers of Latino workers. In a recent example, MALDEF negotiated a settlement for the largely Latino workforce in our longstanding challenge to labor law violations by several related car wash operators in Los Angeles. We also filed suit against an aircraft cleaning company on behalf of employees who were banned from speaking Spanish on the job.