Workers at Flor de Mayo, a Peruvian-Chinese restaurant located on Broadway and 101st Street, were up in arms Tuesday night over alleged low pay, sharing stories of receiving wages as low as $1.25 an hour. The protest outside the restaurant and another one last Saturday are part of the employees’ “Justice Will Be Served!” campaign.
The protests come during a month wracked by similar disputes over wages and questionable delivery worker firings at local eateries Ollie’s and Saigon Grill.
Adolfo Lopez, a former Flor de Mayo employee and one of four plaintiffs in a pending lawsuit against the restaurant and its owner, Phillip Chu, said that at one point he worked 72 hours a week for $1.25 an hour. Lopez eventually quit and returned to his home in Mexico but came back to New York “to protest so they would stop the abuse,” he said in Spanish.
Last year, a similar situation at Saigon Grill, a Vietnamese restaurant located on Amsterdam Avenue and 90th Street, resulted in fired delivery workers suing the restaurant’s owners, Simon and Michelle Nget. The lawsuit followed allegations of improper payment far below the state delivery worker minimum wage of $4.85—some Saigon Grill workers claimed to be paid $1.65 an hour—and the subsequent firing of 36 workers who refused to sign an affidavit stating that they received minimum wage.
“Saigon Grill sparked a movement among delivery workers,” said John Antush, a Teachers College graduate and member of National Mobilization Against Sweat Shops, a worker rights advocacy group based in New York. Antush speculated that the prior action at Saigon Grill and the successful filing of two legal cases inspired these Flor de Mayo workers, suffering from similarly unjust conditions, to speak out.
Indeed, since the Saigon Grill suit was filed, delivery workers at three other restaurants—Ollie’s Noodle Shop on 116th and Broadway, Our Place on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Flor de Mayo, which also has a second location on Amsterdam Avenue—have launched similar campaigns.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Flor de Mayo delivery workers and their supporters gathered outside the restaurant holding posters and shouting “Shame on you!” to customers walking into the restaurant.
Meanwhile, a flier distributed at Tuesday’s protest quoted owner Phillip Chu as telling one worker, “This dishwashing machine is worth more than your life.”
The protesting workers are led by Arek Tomaszewski, who entered the labor rights movement when he was injured while working overtime at a different restaurant, unconnected with Flor de Mayo. The workers said his assistance has been invaluable to the protesters, as many of the workers do not speak English well.
José Chu, manager of the 101st Street Flor de Mayo denied the allegations. “We do pay minimum wages,” he said, asserting that the labor dispute involves only the Amsterdam Avenue location.
However, last year’s lawsuit was filed against Phillip Chu, owner and executive officer of both locations, and workers from both branches claim to have experienced abuses.
“The owners are not intentionally cruel—they just go by what they already know,” said passerby Lois Tobin, a Columbia School of Nursing graduate, saying that when managers see other established restaurants get away with paying workers illegal wages, they feel more comfortable employing similar policies in their own restaurants.