By Connor Adams Sheets
An alliance of workers banded together last week in Flushing to protest what they contended were unfair and illegal working practices at some city businesses.
Gathering in front of Gwang Zhou restaurant at 136-59 37th Ave., where employees last week lodged a class-action lawsuit against the owners, dozens of Asian-American workers from across the city and Long Island held up signs blasting companies they said slighted them and chanted slogans including, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
The protest marked the expansion of a campaign begun in earnest last month with a rally solely against Gwang Zhou.
That event garnered enough attention to increase energy and draw a larger crowd April 14, according to attendees like Song Deping, who said through a translator that he was underpaid and forced to work long hours at a nail salon in Carle Place, L.I.
A man who answered the phone at Gwang Zhou said its owners declined to comment on the suit or the protest.
“Because he has the same problem, he wants to join up with the other people, restaurant workers, nail salon workers. They all have the same problems,” a translator said for Deping. “We want to let everybody know that you have the power to complain and the right to.”
The event was billed as the official kick-off to a citywide effort to end all unfair labor conditions in Flushing.
“We’re launching today a campaign to make Flushing a sweatshop-free community,” said Mika Nagasaki, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Staff and Workers Association. “This campaign is not just one industry, it’s not just one shop, it’s citywide in that it affects the rest of the city.”
A similar effort in Chinatown has had positive results for workers who won suits against employers who took advantage of them.
Li Rong Gao and Xiao Hong Zheng filed a suit April 13 on behalf of a group of the company’s employees at Gwang Zhou. The suit claims Perfect Team Corp., which changed its name in June 2009 to Ji Shiang Inc. and does business as Gwang Zhou restaurant, paid workers who worked more than 50 hours a week as little as $400 per month, took tips from employees and engaged in retaliatory practices against Gao and Zheng and fired them when they began to complain to the owners and organize a union.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board that resulted in the board filing a complaint and prosecuting the company in February.
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
