While attending the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, a city that is ground zero of both worker exploitation and the movement seeking to combat this exploitation, Melvin Yee and Matthew Sirolly volunteered and interned at a number of organizations involved in the struggle for low-income and immigrant workers’ rights in Los Angeles. They witnessed first-hand the frustration of workers who were denied their basic rights and systematically exploited in Los Angeles' underground economy.

Their clients had worked grueling hours for less than minimum wage and, even after finding the courage to report these violations and negotiate the State’s administrative wage claim process, ended up with nothing but a piece of paper saying they were owed wages that they could not collect.

As public-interest attorneys serving this community, Sirolly and Yee were convinced that something needed to be done, and in 2007, with seed funding from Echoing Green, launched The Wage Justice Center to enforce the basic economic rights of California's workers, hold bad-faith employers accountable, and combat the exploitation of the underground economy.