LMS Post ~ NYC Restaurant Immigrant Employee Activism News

Rats, the LMS ate everything I originally wrote. In short word: This is an ongoing case of immigrant employee mistreatment going on in NYC in the restaurant industry, namely Saigon Grill. Some of you may or may not have seen the boycotts there and/or heard of this. Until it hit the news, 99% my takeout came from there because it was cheap and got there in record time, which made sense once it was reported that deliverypeople were fined for not being as fast as humanly possible. However, it is a good example of immigrants demanding better from their employers in the form of a living wage and decent treatment and they actually won a class action lawsuit recently to that end.

It is just a solid example of immigrant activism and persistence for better working standards and a sad commentary on the fact that this even has to happen in NYC.

Saigon Grill Owners Arrested, Charged With Felonies

By John Del Signore

Police have arrested Simon Nget, a Cambodian refugee who built a thriving Vietnamese restaurant mini-chain in NYC only to see the well-received food eclipsed by his notorious mistreatment of the Chinese immigrant delivery workers, who recently won a $4.6 million class action lawsuit against the restaurateur. Nget's wife Michelle was also arrested this morning. The couple is charged with falsifying business records and evidence tampering, allegedly to hide how many hours the delivery staff worked. The prosecution is being spearheaded by the office of state attorney general Andrew Cuomo, and the Times reports that the Ngets have been charged with over Class E 200 felony counts, which each carry a term of up to four years in prison.