NYT: Where Delivery Is a Mainstay, a Rebellion Over Pay ($1.40 an hour)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/nyregion/15delivery.html?

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: April 15, 2007

They can usually be seen pedaling madly on Manhattan streets, often against traffic, rushing to satisfy New Yorkers’ capacious appetites for cold sesame noodles and General Tso’s chicken.

But nowadays these restaurant deliverymen can increasingly be seen standing defiantly on the city’s sidewalks, hoisting protest signs and shouting that they should be paid the minimum wage.

Call it the deliverymen’s rebellion. These workers, almost all of them immigrants from China, have picketed several Saigon Grill, Ollie’s and Our Place outlets, accusing these well-known Asian restaurants of paying them as little as $1.40 an hour, far less than the federal and state minimum wage. The workers have filed federal wage lawsuits in Manhattan against those restaurant companies, and their advocates say they will soon sue a dozen other restaurants in the city.


Workers picketing outside a Saigon Grill restaurant last week in Greenwich Village. In a dispute over their pay, deliverymen have been locked out of two of the chain’s locations.


“The conditions are pretty bad in all the restaurants, so there’s no real advantage to switch to another restaurant,” said Yu Guan Ke, a deliveryman who said Saigon Grill usually paid him just $120 in wages for his 75-hour weeks. “Before we would accept whatever wages they would give us, but now we see we should stand up for what we’re entitled to under the law.”

Mr. Ke, one of the plaintiffs, said his pay came to $1.60 an hour before tips; New York State law requires that deliverymen receive at least $4.85 an hour before tips. He said he worked 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. six days a week and often received $100 a day in tips, making 20 to 30 deliveries a day. (The state minimum wage is $7.15 an hour for non-tipped workers, $2 higher than the federal minimum.)


Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Yu Guan Ke, who started working for Saigon Grill a decade ago, says he was paid $120 in wages for 75-hour weeks as a deliveryman.


The deliverymen’s movement has picked up steam for numerous reasons, among them that many of the workers hail from the same towns in Fujian Province and often compare notes. And they have been emboldened by strikes and lawsuits that improved wages at some restaurants in Chinatown, giving them hope of obtaining similar raises at restaurants uptown.

FULL story at link.

[Matsubara]

1. Yes, these guys probably get some tips...

...but EVERYBODY deserves a decent wage for a hard day's work, especially in a city as expensive to live in as NYC.

K&R