High cost of cheap labor
Often exploited, Chinese eatery workers fight for fair wages
Monday, April 23, 2007
BY BRIAN DONOHUE
Star-Ledger Staff
Tucked behind a Hooters restaurant on Route 23 in Wayne, the Majestic Buffet is a 250-seat testament to the global appeal of Chinese food and the ever-growing American appetite.

For $7.99, diners can fill their plates from five steam tray tables piled high with beef and broccoli, baked salmon and "chicken fow fun." There are eight types of dumplings, six kinds of soup, as well as lobsters swimming in tanks and koi swimming in a gurgling fountain.

But Chinese restaurant workers, labor organizers and immigration experts say there's a secret ingredient behind the large portions and cheap prices at Majestic and thousands of Chinese restaurants across the United States: cheap, often exploited, immigrant labor.

"Why do you think you can go to a Chinese restaurant and get a huge dish of food for eight bucks?" said Ken Guest, a sociology professor at The City University of New York's Baruch College, who has studied the lives of Chinese restaurant workers. "Do you think the Chinese have invented a cheaper way of raising chickens? It's pure and simple labor issues."

In February, a federal administrative law judge ordered the owners of Majestic Buffet to rehire and pay thousands in back wages to seven immigrant workers who complained to the National Labor Relations Board, claiming bosses forced them to pay kickbacks out of their tips and work 60 to 80 hours a week with no overtime.

Steve Mannion, an attorney representing new owners who purchased the eatery after the lawsuit was filed, said the restaurant is complying with all labor laws. He has asked a judge to remove the new owners from the order, saying "it has nothing to do with us."

The Majestic Buffet case was the third such complaint filed against Chinese restaurants in northern New Jersey in the past two years. All of the cases challenged a system that workers say forces them into near indentured servitude: relying on their bosses for food and housing, and being cornered by debt and threats into accepting abusive working conditions.

The lawsuits have made New Jersey the prime battleground in an effort by workers to break their longtime role of subservience and fight conditions they say are often the norm in Chinese restaurants nationwide.

The nation's 40,000 eat-in, takeout or buffet style Chinese restaurants outnumber McDonald's three to one, according to the industry newsletter Chinese Restaurant News.

While long hours, low pay and hard work have long been the norm for immigrant or U.S. citizen workers in all types of restaurants, experts cite a variety of factors that make Chinese immigrants particularly vulnerable to abuse.

With smugglers currently charging $70,000 to bring Chinese illegal immigrants to the U.S., many workers arrive already deeply in debt and desperate for any income to chisel away at the sums they owe to often violent criminal trafficking rings.

With no English or Spanish skills, most see working in the Chinese restaurants their only option and fear complaining will have them blacklisted by a tight-knit group of owners.

Others new to the country say they have no knowledge of state and federal labor laws. A system in which workers depend on their bosses for food and housing, often in far-flung locations, make them even more fearful of speaking out.

Tony Tsai, 26, of Jersey City, a green-card holder and one of the workers who sued Majestic Buffet, says he decided to fight for better conditions because simply finding another job would have landed him in the same situation.

"Find another job? What would that do? This is the system in New Jersey," said Tsai, who now works as an organizer with the Chinese Staff Workers Association, which has spearheaded the recent lawsuits. "Most of the Chinese buffets are doing the same thing."

The New Jersey Department of Labor is investigating complaints of state wage and hour law violations at the eatery, spokesman Kevin Smith said.

The former owners named in the NLRB complaint, David and Jane Ho of Cedar Grove, did not show up in court and could not be reached for comment.

Mannion, the attorney who represents both New Majestic and King Chef, another Wayne restaurant that settled a similar lawsuit filed by workers in December, called the allegations against both restaurants "absolutely unfounded."

He blames the flurry of lawsuits on the Chinese Staff Workers Association who, he says, "just copy the allegations from case to case."

Rather, Mannion said, it's the workers who are sticking it to the owners.

Mannion said many Chinese restaurant workers are unauthorized immigrants who tell their employers they must be paid in cash because they have no Social Security number.

After working for a period of time, he said, they often decide to sue for back wages, knowing the employer will have no paperwork to prove in court that he actually paid them.

"A lot of these restaurants feel under pressure to get workers, and they feel they have to hire these folks who are often illegal," Mannion said. "Should the employers do it? Definitely not, and I will tell them a million times, 'don't do it.'"


DEBT DEFERS DREAMS

While past waves of Chinese immigration brought people from Canton and other more developed provinces, immigration experts say the bulk of new arrivals are from poor, rural villages in the southern province of Fujian. They come smuggled in container ships, fishing trawlers, on airplanes with fake passports purchased in third-world countries or, in a growing number of cases, sneaking across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Most have similar dreams: pay off their debts, then save enough to someday open a Chinese restaurant of their own.

The first stop on that path is a dingy row of unmarked agencies clustered in a section of Manhattan's Chinatown at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge.

Some no larger than a walk-in closet, the agencies' walls are plastered with hundreds of small white cards, tiny help wanted ads written in Chinese characters -- deliveryman, waitress, sushi man.

Because most immigrants cannot read the English alphabet, locations are listed only by area code. On a recent visit, there were thousands of postings, from New Jersey's 973 and 609, to the 270 and 239 of western Kentucky and southwest Georgia.

Most advertise salaries of $1,500 to $2,500 a month. Restaurant owners provide food and housing, and in most cases, salaries paid in cash.

Workers pay the agency $30 for an on-the-spot telephone interview. If a deal is struck, the worker can use one of scores of Chinatown-based bus lines to begin their journey.

Standing outside the 8888 Agency on Eldridge Street, worker Jack Fang, 26, said workers often find the salary is much lower than what was promised in their phone interviews. Far from home, broke and unable to speak English, they have no choice but to simply keep working.

Fang, who like many Chinese immigrants has adopted an English first name to ease communication with Americans, came to the United States from a small town in the Fujian Province five years ago.

He used the agencies to land jobs at Chinese restaurants in Chester, S.C., and the Pennsylvania cities of Pittsburgh and Reading.

He fell into a pattern common among mostly Fujianese workers in the system: He would work each job for a year or so, then quit, exhausted and depressed, return to Chinatown to meet with friends, maybe see a dentist or doctor, then regroup and search for a better job.

These days, with his growing command of English, he is hoping for a job at a more upscale restaurant in New York, something with better hours and pay. None of the thousands of jobs listed in the agencies match that description, he said.

"They're all the same -- too much time. Thirteen hours a day for just tips," he said.

Standing next to Fang, Tony Dong, 40, lists the places he's lived in 14 years of working for Chinese restaurants: Nebraska, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Los Angeles.

"An American work week -- 40 hours. A Chinese week? Seventy to 80 hours. They supposed to pay double," Dong said. "Never. Not one time."


CAMPAIGN TO IMPROVE CONDITIONS

Weary from working in isolated areas of Missouri and Georgia, Elaine Li, 26, and Linda Wang, 29 -- both lacking immigration papers at the time -- returned to the Chinatown agencies in November 2003 to find something better.

To their relief, they found coveted jobs just an hour from Chinatown, at Rainbow Buffet restaurant in Fairview.

In a lawsuit filed against the restaurant with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union in October 2005, the two women say they were forced to work 60-hour weeks but not paid overtime and also were forced to turn over 10 percent of their tips to their bosses.

They lived with 30 other workers in a rundown house in Fairview. In a recent interview, neither could remember the address.

When they complained, the women say a campaign of harassment began. Busboys nicknamed the women "breasts" and "ass" and would sneak up behind them and smell their hair, or grope them. Other workers shoved food carts into them. Wang says one busboy hit her with a full bucket of ice, knocking her to the floor.

"The bosses know they can do anything they want," Li said.

Through word-of-mouth, the women found the Chinatown offices of the Chinese workers association. The group has waged a 15-year campaign workers say has greatly improved conditions in Manhattan Chinese restaurants. Association workers saw the case as a chance to take their campaign to New Jersey.

"They've won some cases here in New York that have set some precedent, and they have sent some signals to the owners that they are vulnerable," said Guest, the sociology professor.

Last May, the two sides settled the case. Citing a confidentiality agreement, lawyers would not disclose the terms of the settlement. In both New York and New Jersey, workers say frequent changes in ownership often made it difficult to hold bosses accountable.

In the Majestic and King Chef cases, for example, records show the restaurants' ownership changed hands almost immediately after the lawsuits were filed.

The Majestic was purchased in August by Ki Sang Wong, who worked as chef under the former owners, the Hos. Mannion, the attorney for the new owners, said there are no ties between the current and former owners, who he believes are now in China.

"This has nothing to do with us," he said.

Mannion conceded the frequent ownership changes are directly tied to the battle over working conditions -- but he denied they are an effort to evade liability.

"They got whacked with their first lawsuit, and it's $100,000 in legal fees," he said. "People get sued, and they get tired of being in the business."



Brian Donohue can be reached at bdonohue@starledger.com or (973)392-1543.




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