Making $7.75 an Hour, and Figuring There’s Little to Lose by Speaking Out

When I worked for Waffle House between IT jobs, I personally experienced wage theft, and witnessed it done to others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/nyregion/making-7-75-an-hour-and-figuring-theres-little-to-lose-by-speaking-out.html

By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: July 1, 2013

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This 25-year-old woman with striking black eyes and hair pulled back in a bun is a shift manager at KFC — her title is good for 50 cents an hour above minimum wage. From this, she and her husband, Jude Toussaint, an unemployed antenna installer, buy clothes for their three children and food, and help her mother with the rent.

Her wages erode on all sides. Often, she said, she finds her check is hours short. And when she works overtime, she receives two checks, each at straight time, as if she worked for two different employers rather than a single KFC across from Bargain Land on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.

Last year boiling oil spilled over and scalded her hands; she received $58 a week in workers’ compensation, she said. Nearly every day her manager called and demanded: When are you returning to work?

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There was a Mexican man with gray hair and a bushy mustache who trained as an architect. His two daughters live in Mexico and depend on him, and he sleeps in a basement and makes $5 an hour delivering Papa John’s pizza.

“I delivered during Hurricane Sandy,” he said in Spanish. “They told us to ride bent over, so that the pizzas didn’t get wet.”

Naquasia Legrand, a 22-year-old from Canarsie, Brooklyn, works at two KFCs. She washes dishes at one for $7.75 and mops floors at the other for $8. She says she must work four or five hours each week off the clock.

She needed to buy a MetroCard last week so she skipped lunch. She shakes her head. “I think I deserve to eat lunch.”

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Papa John’s chief executive, John Schnatter, makes $2 million per year and lives on a faux medieval estate outside Louisville, Ky. He spoke recently of trying to subvert Obamacare’s provisions by cutting the hours of all of his workers to less than 30 hours. YUM! Brands, which owns KFC and Taco Bell and whose chief executive makes $11.3 million per year, helped lead the battle against paid sick days.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/nyregion/city-council-hears-plea-from-fast-food-workers.html?_r=0

New York City Council Hears Plea From Fast-Food Workers

By E. C. GOGOLAK
Published: June 27, 2013

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¶ The economic reality for the city’s fast-food workers is bleak. According to the advocacy group New York Communities for Change, fast-food workers in the city make on average between $10,000 and $18,000 a year, well below the Census Bureau’s poverty income threshold level of about $23,000 for a family of four.

¶ Low pay, however, is not the only problem. A number of workers who testified before the Council’s Committee on Civil Service and Labor said they were not paid for the overtime they had worked.

¶ A study issued last month by Fast Food Forward, a coalition of groups seeking to improve conditions for fast-food workers, found that about 80 percent of employees in the industry in New York City had experienced some form of wage theft in the past year.

¶ Shenita Simon, a mother of three who works at a KFC in Brooklyn, said that to avoid paying her overtime, the manager would make her clock out even though she was still working. Yum Brands, which operates and licenses KFC, as well as Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants, did not respond to phone calls on Thursday for comment.

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