![]() ![]() “I only have two hands, two eyes, two ears – what do they expect me to do?” he said after leaving a job he had for only a few days. He described constant insults and work demands that are nearly impossible to meet. He is often angry at the Chinese restaurant owners for the low pay and the way they treat Mexican workers. ![]() Mario, 44, has worked in countless Chinese restaurants around the country, many of them through the Chicago hiring agencies. Mario is often angry at the Chinese restaurant owners for the low pay and the way they treat Mexican workers. Their last names are not used here because of their undocumented status and because most still hope to get work in restaurants. The lawsuit demands the hiring agencies, meanwhile, be closed through a permanent injunction. The complaint, filed on behalf of the public and the Illinois department of labor, adds: “These unlicensed employment agencies have targeted Latino workers and actively marketed their ability to provide such Latino (or ‘Mexican’) workers to Chinese buffet restaurants that looked to fill low-paid kitchen positions.”Ĭara Hendrickson, chief of the attorney general’s public interest division, said they are not trying to close the restaurants, but rather force them to comply with the law. “These employment agencies target vulnerable Latino workers and place them with restaurant employers who exploit them,” Madigan said. The attorney general’s complaint cites wages as low as $3.50 an hour and commissions between $120 and $220. #Restaurant abridge plus#That comes out to $5-8 an hour, significantly below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour plus time-and-a-half for overtime. After that, they typically make $400 to $600 for working six-day weeks, 12 hours a day, as dishwashers, cutters, friers or cooks. The men owe the agency a “commission” of $120 to $250 for each job they typically work four days to pay off the commission and transportation. The agencies pay for bus or train tickets to send the men to restaurants in other states, where they live in housing controlled by the restaurant owners, as described by more than 30 men interviewed between October and March. “Maybe they worked at Chinese restaurants – but not through my office.” He later conceded: “maybe some go to my office”. “The people under the bridge are no good, lazy,” Ganglie Jiao, the owner of one of the three agencies sued by the attorney general, told the Guardian. Talking with the Guardian, the agency owners and their lawyers denied wrongdoing or a connection with the homeless men. ![]() In responses filed in federal court, the defendants have all denied the allegations or said such violations are not their responsibility. #Restaurant abridge code#One of the agencies closed its doors in October after the city issued building code violations the other two agencies and the restaurants continue operating. They work at Chinese buffets, Japanese sushi bars and steakhouses, and other restaurants across the midwest, sent by Chinese employment agencies that are being investigated by the Illinois attorney general for alleged civil rights, human rights and labor law violations.Īttorney general Lisa Madigan’s complaint, filed on 12 November, names three nearby hiring agencies and two Illinois restaurants and refers to a larger network of eateries. These men are homeless but they are not unemployed. On this Saturday in February, however, the men are silent, and the fear and misery in the air are palpable. Men from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala cook frozen shrimp or crab over a fire, drink beers, joke and even sing. Some days the encampment under a bridge just south of downtown and just north of Chicago’s Chinatown has the feeling of a bedraggled backyard barbecue. ![]()
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