NYT: Restaurants Must Rehire Deliverymen, Judge Rules

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/nyregion/21delivery.html?_r=3&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: February 21, 2008

For nearly a year, devotees of Vietnamese food have encountered deliverymen picketing in front of two of Manhattan’s most highly rated Asian restaurants: the Saigon Grills on the Upper West Side and in Greenwich Village.

The picket lines could soon come down, because a judge with the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that the owner of the restaurants illegally fired 28 deliverymen last March and should reinstate them.

In a decision made public on Wednesday, Judge Ray Green concluded that Simon Nget, the restaurants’ owner, had illegally retaliated against the workers, all of them immigrants from China, by firing them because they were planning to bring a wage and hour lawsuit against him.

Saigon Grill had argued that it fired the workers because its delivery operations were losing money.

Before being fired, the deliverymen asserted that they were sometimes paid only $120 for a 75-hour work week, coming to $1.60 an hour, considerably less than the minimum of $4.85 an hour, before tips, that they were supposed to be receiving under state law.

“We’re very happy with this decision,” said Yu Guan Ke, a fired deliveryman who worked at the uptown restaurant for a decade. “We’ve been demanding to go back to work for so long now, and have given the boss so many chances to resolve this. If it were not for all the support we’ve received from students, community members and politicians, this struggle could not have continued.”

FULL story at link.

[quakerboy]

1. What is the Fed. Minimum wage?