Korean and Latino Restaurant Workers Organize in Koreatown, Los Angeles Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA) was established about five years ago with a goal to protect and promote immigrant workers' rights as part of a strategy for building a broader progressive movement in the Korean community and the city of Los Angeles. Since then, almost 50 percent of the 900 or so cases KIWA has handled address problems that exist in the restaurant industry. We have reached the conclusion that it is the restaurant workers who labor under the most appalling working conditions. Currently, there are approximately 300 Korean-owned restaurants in Koreatown and nearly 2000 workers, mostly Korean and Latino. Unfortunately, it is an accepted norm for these workers to labor 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, for an hourly pay that does not even amount to the federal minimum wage. For working 13 to 14 hours a day in the veritable inferno created by the constant proximity to fire and the old sweat-smelling heat trapped in the kitchen without ventilation, a cook or a cook's helper may receive $50 to $60. A waitperson in a Korean restaurant does not normally carry a plate or two skillfully balanced on their hands and wrists: they carry a large tray with up to 10 different bowls and saucers containing various condiments that accompany every meal. It's all complimentary. Patrons think they are getting their money's worth. Waitpersons may not sit at all or eat during regular meal time. They drag their bodies home often after midnight. At the end of the month they are paid $600, at best $700. Employers rationalize this sub-minimum pay by saying that waitpersons receive tips. However, tips may never be sufficient to even raise the total earnings to a minimum wage level. "I cannot go to sleep without taking pain-killers because of the severe pain in my legs," a Koreatown waitress told KIWA. "On my occasional day off, I do laundry and sleep all day." In addition to inadequate pay, restaurant workers endure inhuman treatment from the employers. Regardless of worker's age, employers use non-honorific language when communicating with their employees. Employers often indulge in authoritarianism based upon socio-economic stratification deeply rooted in their mentality. In some instances, employers curse their waitresses, calling them "bitch," and even slap them across the face when the workers oppose them. According to Danny Park, a case manager at KIWA, "in addition to handling cases that demonstrate an unmistakable breach of law such as non-payment of wage, I receive a lot of phone calls from workers who recount the insulting treatment they have received from employers. In addition to showering verbal abuse on the workers, the employers often order their workers to do things that are clearly not included in any restaurant worker's job description: going out to buy a pack of cigarettes, baby-sitting employers' children on days off, and sometimes even doing the employers' laundry." In the restaurant industry, it is also common for employers to fire their workers without giving them prior notice or even an understandable reason. Owners often cite incidences when a worker quits abruptly, without giving them a chance to find a replacement to rationalize abrupt firing practices. An employer who loses a worker all of a sudden is merely inconvenienced by it, and the position is quickly filled again; however, if a worker loses his job suddenly, then immediately his predicament poses a serious threat to his and his dependents' livelihoods. The American rule of law on termination is the same: at will. But, it is more severely abused in immigrant workplaces. Employers' response to their workers' injuries is also wholly inadequate. The current law declares it mandatory for an employer with one or more employees to have workers compensation insurance, and this insurance is supposed to provide hospital/doctor fees as well as the costs of recuperation. Considering the obvious fact that manual laborers, whose only asset is their bodies, will not even be able to subsist when they become injured, workers compensation insurance is a basic necessity. Yet, a restaurant with such insurance is hard to find in Koreatown. While restaurant owners hire new workers with a warm invitation to work together like a family, the lack of insurance in most Koreatown restaurants reveals that "working-together-like-a-family" is just a string of empty words. In reality, many employers are concentrating on increasing their profit. In one extreme case, when a woman who had been working long hours as a cook was finally overwhelmed with exhaustion and lay unconscious on the kitchen floor, her employer called a taxi and sent her home. It did not occur to the employers to call an ambulance. A few days later she was fired without any compensation for her injury. Why is it that so many immigrant restaurant owners refuse to abide by the rules clearly expressed in labor laws? We can conjecture that, in some instances, this failure stems from not knowing the laws well enough. Another reason is that enforcement by government agencies or through court systems is often ineffective and requires time and energy. In the case of back wage claims, workers may not be able to collect their claims easily even after winning a judgment. Of course, the underlying reason for intensified exploitation at immigrant workplaces is due to heightened competition among immigrant capitals, small to mid-size, which are locked into a market of limited size and variety--an ethnic enclave economy. Also, due to lack of decent-paying jobs in the inner-city, multi-ethnic part of Los Angeles, many relatively well-to-do members of the immigrant working class intent on achieving financial security find themselves stretching resources, better saved for retirement income, on running small businesses on narrow profit margins. The resulting, dogged competition among immigrant entrepreneurs gives rise to intense exploitation of immigrant workers. The poignancy of the state of affairs in immigrant-owned labor-intensive businesses is often cynically illustrated by the common saying that profit out of running a restaurant is entirely made up of suppressed labor cost. (From this picture, one can easily see that attacking immigrant entrepreneurs is only one piece of the whole puzzle, which should include appropriate economic development strategies for the inner city, and strategies for industry-wide reform for respective industries targeting the large corporations that have resources to effect such reform. Given the tremendous exploitative pressure put on immigrant workplaces, the only effective way for workers to fight for their rights is to organize themselves against abusive employers and act collectively to improve their working conditions, instead of relying on the ineffective legal or governmental enforcement system. To that end, KIWA has gradually developed a new approach emphasizing workers' initiative, one that analyzes every individual case and explores its potential to be developed into a bigger fight involving more workers and their initiatives and aimed at long-lasting changes at the workplace or in the entire industry. This bigger fight involves public actions where other restaurants and the general public are challenged to be part of the process and to reflect on their own practices. This new approach has brought much success with restaurants, which provide a natural space for public action. Restaurant owners are retailers, sensitive to the opinion of consumers, who are in essence indistinguishable from the general public, who are in theory implicitly or explicitly represented by a public action sponsored by workers and KIWA. (A similar strategic orientation led us to launch a retailer-accountability campaign in the garment industry whereby we put pressure on the players most sensitive to public opinion, the retailers.) Many restaurant owners confronted with such public action or a threat thereof thus have paid off the unpaid wages within a few days. Some restaurant owners have countered viciously. Recently, we came across a case where the non-complying owner conspired with the unpaid worker's new employer to have the worker fired. Such action sends a powerful and terrifying message to workers. Blacklisting is a criminal misdemeanor and triggers double damages and treble damages when misrepresentation is involved. What's more, Korean Restaurant Owners Association (KROA) played the role of intermediary between the non-complying owner and the unpaid worker's new employer. We filed a lawsuit, held a press conference exposing the "blacklisting" practice to the public, and started picketing the non-complying owner's restaurant. Within one day, the owner paid off the worker's claim fully and KROA requested a negotiation to settle the lawsuit. Out of the negotiation, KIWA secured a contract that was industry-wide in scope. KROA agreed to put up $10,000 to provide financial support for blacklisted workers. KROA agreed to sponsor workers' rights seminars at all member restaurants. KROA also agreed to meet periodically to discuss ways to improve working conditions. The agreement provides an on-going basis for holding KROA responsible, and this relationship will strengthen our organizing efforts at individual restaurants. The KROA agreement enables us to get our foot inside restaurants, but there needs to be serious follow-up for this first step to have real meaning in the end. What this follow-up should be is a difficult question. As stated earlier, we encourage all victims of individual cases to bring other workers on board and make collective demands that will fundamentally change the workplace. However, we always have to think about what this fundamental change means in at individual workplaces and through what form of organization workers can monitor and sustain change effectively. K.S. Park Danny Park |
