Bilked Employees of Wins of California Inc. Closer to Retribution
By Michelle Logsdon - March 12, 2002About 300 employees of a now defunct San Francisco garment-manufacturing company are one step closer to receiving $840,000 in back wages. California Labor Commissioner Arthur Lujan secured a prejudgment writ of attachment March 7 placing Wins of California Inc.’s $2.1 million worth of investment property on the virtual chopping block.
Toha “Jimmy” Quan, and his wife Anna Wong, owned Wins of California Inc. as well as two other San Francisco garment shops, Win Industries of America and Win Fashions, plus a third shop in Utah called Tomi Inc.
In July of 2001, the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) acted on a tip and began investigating Wins of California Inc. for withholding pay from its employees for almost two months. “We interviewed the workers and found that the tip was true,” DIR Spokesman Dean Fryer told adjustercom.com. “Then we interviewed the workers about their wage pay and what they were owed.”
What they found is that the workers, mostly immigrant Chinese women who did not speak English, were afraid to come forward until it became apparent they were not going to be paid for their labor. “They had built a bond with the workers because they depended on them and believed the money would be coming so they just kept working,” said Fryer.
Although the workers in California were not paid, the Utah company, Tomi Inc., received $1.2 million in revenue during the same time period. DIR officials do not know what happened to that revenue.
The problems began for Wins’ owners in March of 2001 when their initial application for a license renewal was rejected because the company owed $3,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. Wong and Quan did not shut down their operation when their license expired, instead they continued making garments for clients such as the U.S. Army and Air Force, J.C. Penney, Sears, Wal-Mart and Kmart.
“I knew the state would never give us a license, no matter what we did,” Wong told the San Francisco Chronicle. “But our people need jobs. They have been with us for ten years. That’s why we kept producing.”
Quan did receive a license for Win Fashion and he told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that he assumed that was sufficient to cover both companies. In his own words Quan said, “This is all a misunderstanding. I did not know the law.”
But officials from the DIR disagreed. Anne Hipshman, assistant chief counsel for DIR’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement said the agency would not renew a license unless a factory owner could demonstrate knowledge of all the laws involved.
Most of the companies that received garments from Wins during April and May cut their ties with the contractors as soon as they were aware of the DIR investigation, and some like Kmart, said they would be willing to pay back wages if required.
All of Wong and Quan’s California businesses are now closed. Wins of California Inc. and Win Fashions filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and Win Industries of America was closed for not carrying workers’ compensation insurance.
Fryer said a lawsuit is pending against the owners to get the back wages but a court date is not set yet. If DIR wins the lawsuit then the courts will liquidate Wong and Quan’s eight properties in San Francisco and Oakland in order to pay the judgment.
“I think we’re confident our evidence will stand up in the court process and the wages will eventually be brought back to the employees,” said Fryer. | 
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