For Manhattan residents, getting speedy delivery in minutes to your door is a way of life. But for restaurant deliverymen who worked at the Saigon Grill, a Chinese restaurant with locations on the West Side and Greenwich Village, it took quite a bit longer – in fact, 9 years for some – to obtain compensation for wage violations.
Finding violations of the state and federal wage and overtime laws, Magistrate Judge Michael Dolinger, awarded $4.6 million for back pay and other damages to 36 delivery workers for the years 1999 to 2007. Up to $328,000 was awarded to some of the deliverymen, all of whom were Chinese immigrants.
The judge found that the owners paid $520 a month to many deliverymen who worked more than 260 hours each month. This meant their pay came to less than $2 an hour.
“I’m very, very happy about this decision,” said one deliveryman, Yu Guan Ke. “It was worth the fight because we were treated badly for so long. I never imagined we would receive so much money.”
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