Workers need to fight for rights
Submitted on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 3:02pm
Santiago, 27, came to New York from Mexico six years ago. To support his wife and three kids back in Mexico, he worked for five years at Flor De Mayo restaurant, on Amsterdam Avenue at 84th Street, until last September.
He made deliveries, did janitorial work, hauled groceries, and worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, with no breaks, for $90 a week. That averages out to $1.25 an hour. Even with tips from deliveries averaging about 30 a day, Santiago earned less than New York's $4.60 an hour minimum wage for tipped employees.
Despite his minuscule wages, Flor De Mayo required him to provide his own bicycle, which cost him $330.
"They treat us like slaves, and I'm fighting for my rights."
In May, after a union organizing dispute at the nearby Saigon Grill Restaurant called attention to the pitiful wages and poor working conditions for restaurant delivery workers citywide, the management at Flor de Mayo raised the salaries of its deliverymen to $184 a week and reduced their work week to 40 hours, its workers said. Even so, last week Santiago, Fernando Lopez, Adolfo Lopez and Venancio Galindo sued the restaurant. They're asking for more than $500,000 total in back wages, unpaid overtime, reimbursable work expenses, and punitive damages for being exploited.
Flor de Mayo's owners, Jose Chu and Phillip Chu, did not return a call for comment.
Legal challenges by workers in the city's low-paid industries to their working conditions are growing. The exploitation of workers in Chinatown has been reported for years. But last week former employees of celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who owns upscale Manhattan restaurants, filed lawsuit in claiming he paid them subminimum wages, cheated them out of overtime and forced them to share tips with their bosses.
The exploitation of low-wage workers is one of the biggest social issues of our time. A study of low-wage jobs in New York City released by The Brennan Center for Social Justice last month found a widespread pattern of abuses in certain industries - ranging from restaurants, groceries and retail stores, to building maintenance and security, laundry and dry cleaning, domestic work, and beauty salons. The most common abuses are paying workers below the minimum wage, forcing them to work long hours without paying overtime, ignoring health and safety regulations, failing to buy workers' compensation insurance, and retaliating against workers who complain. The study found that the exploited workers are often immigrants and people who've been released from prison.
I'm told that New York State has some of the most progressive labor laws in the country. But its department of labor is understaffed. Even when workplace abuses are discovered, critics say, the department often settles for settlements far less than the workers are owed.
But when it comes to wages and workplace treatment, it doesn't matter the workers are here legally or illegally. All workers should be paid and treated according to the law.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer has demonstrated concern about workers' issues, and created a bureau for immigration workers in the labor department. Last fall, after a number of highly publicized deaths at construction sites, most of them involving immigrant laborers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg funded a task force to address safety issues.
The way for workers to get relief from oppressive work conditions is to sue or to complain to the right agencies. But plenty of immigrants don't know what the labor laws are, and if they do, they may be afraid to complain for fear of having their illegal status revealed. That's why more community groups like National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, a workers advocacy group, need to educate workers about their rights. Once workers start talking about their problems, they start organizing.
"All New York delivery workers need to open their minds and realize we have rights," Fernando Lopez told me. "We have the right to fight these conditions."
About the Union:
The Industrial Workers of the World, NYC
General Membership Branch meets the first Sunday of each month at 2pm at our office: 44-61 11th Street 3rd Floor Long Island City, NY 11101.
Industrial Union 460/640 meets the first monday of each month at 7pm at our office: 44-61 11th Street 3rd Floor Long Island City, NY 11101.
How to contact us:
- IU 460/640 - Billy Randal 646-645-6284
- Starbucks Union - 917-577-1110
- E-mail: [email protected]
- Mail: PO Box 7430, JAF Station, NY 10116
- http://www.IWW.org
- http://www.starbucksunion.org