Immigrants in the restaurant indusry have for a long time been undergoing poor treatment. They experience health and safety violations, as well as abuse from superiors. Mexican workers specifically are placed in “the back of the house,” where they work as cooks and cleaners. While almost all of these workers seem to be facing a hopeless career, a Mexican immigrant named Leonel Baizan has been working to change conditions for his fellow immigrants. Baizan began his career in 1999 at the high-end steakhouse Citè in the kitchen, where a dozen Latinos worked as dishwashers, runners, and prep cooks. After facing much verbal abuse and injuries during his hours, Baizan became determined to make it to the front of the house. Much to his luck, one of the friendlier managers put Baizan on the floor to see how he could manage as a waiter and decided he did the job well.
Just when it seemed that work would be better for Baizan, he soon discovered that due to his ethnicity, discrimination would continue even out of the back of the house. A new manager took over, who explicitly decided to give the most strenuous and laborious work to the Latinos. If any worker objected, they were punished with reduced shifts or even being fired. Finally, Baizan had to pay the managers a portion of his tips to get good assignments, an illegal practice known as “tipping the house.” These illegal practices were enough to Baizan, and he began to collect floor plans, schedules, pay stubs, and went on a search for a lawyer.
Setting out on a campaign to change the treatment of immigrant workers, Baizan and executive director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), Saru Jayaraman made a case of the matter. Together, they recruited Mexican workers from the Park Avenue Café, and from Cosi Café near Union Square. After months of contacting numerous lawyers, attempting to find sufficient evidence for their case, and failing several times, “the thing that no one thought would ever happen did,” according to Rinku Sen. In December 2004, Saru received a call that the company was ready to settle. Their compensations were as followed:
“The settlement included $164,000 in back wages and damages, but more important, a number of protections for the workers. They now had an employee Manual, half an hour for lunch, a time clock, five sick days per year, and paid vacation. The company agreed not to fire anyone for a year, and after that to fire only with three days’ notice to ROC. Finally, management agreed to post job openings internally for one week before making them public.”
This settlement marked the beginning of a new world for Mexican immigrant workers. Rights for these immigrants were beginning to be established, and they could no longer be unfairly discriminated against for job positions.
To read more about this topic, as well as the full work “Mexican Immigrants in the Restaurant Industry in New York City,” please contact:
Samantha Rotenberg
srotenbe@hunter.cuny.edu
