A federal judge awarded $4.6 million in back pay and damages on Monday to 36 delivery workers at two Saigon Grill restaurants in Manhattan. The decision is the culmination of over a year of boycotts and vocal protests from the mostly-Chinese immigrant workers, who were fed up with their abysmal work conditions. With the help of Justice Will Be Served and a law firm working pro-bono, they sued the owner of the popular Vietnamese restaurant, one Simon Nget, a Cambodian refugee who built his business from scratch.
The decision paints a rather unflattering picture of Nget, who runs Saigon Grill with his wife. The couple paid their delivery men less than $2 an hour, requiring them to work 11 to 13 hours a day, usually six days a week. They illegally deducted pay — from $20 to $200 — when deliverymen committed infractions like letting the restaurant door slam. Justice Will Be Served also says the owners charged heavy fines for late deliveries (regardless of harsh weather conditions), and, when the delivery men were robbed or injured, forced them to cover their own medical costs as well as the expense of the lost orders. Oh, and they also had to buy and maintain their own bicycles and motorbikes!
Some of the deliverymen were awarded up to $328,000. One worker, Yu Guan Ke, told the Times he would use the money to help buy health insurance for his family, adding that "it was worth the fight because we were treated badly for so long." Ken Kimerling, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, told the Post, "This is an enormous victory. The problems at Saigon Grill are problems that are endemic to the entire restaurant industry. Monetarily, it's an enormous amount of money and it's what other restaurants will face if they don't clean up their acts."
