Local Restaurant Owner Reprimanded for Employee Firings

After a year of controversy over its labor practices, local eatery Saigon Grill has been ordered to rehire the delivery employees it fired after they threatened a lawsuit over illegally low wages.

Organizers with Justice Will Be Served!, which has advocated on the workers’ behalf, announced Tuesday that their boycott of Saigon Grill will continue until the restaurant complies with the ruling and reinstates all the workers. In addition to the boycott, the restaurant has faced frequent picketing by workers and activists, including many Columbia students, since the delivery men were fired last year.

“Saigon Grill owners Simon and Michelle Nget act as if they are above U.S. labor laws,” JWBS said in a press release. “They continue to snub the workers, the community, and elected officials who have given many opportunities for the restaurant to resolve this labor dispute.”

Raymond Green, a National Labor Relations Board judge, found Simon Nget acted illegally when he dismissed 22 delivery men who worked at his restaurant at 90th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, as well as six delivery men from another location on University Place, in March of last year.

Days before they were fired, workers signed authorization cards to form a union and agreed to participate in a lawsuit against the restaurant. Workers alleged that they were paid as little as $1.60 an hour, well under the state minimum wage for delivery workers of $4.85 an hour before tips. Workers said they were charged hefty fines for taking sick leave or for minor offenses like closing a restaurant door too loudly and were frequently verbally abused by Nget.

According to the NLRB judgment, two employees approached Nget and demanded that he raise their pay or face a lawsuit. Nget offered the employees an extra $5 per shift, and when they rejected the deal, he ended delivery service at both of his restaurants and dismissed all the delivery workers.

Green found that firing the workers in response to their threat to sue was a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the right of employees to engage in concerted activity for “mutual aid and protection.” He ordered the restaurant to rehire the delivery workers and pay them the earnings they have lost since they were discharged, plus interest.

Nget argued that he ended delivery service because it was not profitable. But the judge found that he had not offered any proof to support this assertion and that Nget would have kept the workers on if they had accepted the extra $5 per shift and dropped the threat of a lawsuit.

Nget has signaled his intent to appeal. Reached by telephone, his lawyer, S. Michael Weisberg, declined to comment. “Sorry, we cannot talk about the case,” he said before hanging up.

The NLRB also found that Saigon Grill had illegally videotaped pickets by employees and ordered the restaurant to cease and desist.