Chinese Restaurant Workers Organize In Face of Murder
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Responding to a brutal murder and reports of labor abuses, Chinese restaurant workers yesterday announced plans to organize.
The murder earlier this month of FaHua Chen, who was shot during a $9 food delivery in the Bronx, drove the workers to demand respect and basic rights. Hours before Chen’s body was presented for a funeral viewing in Chinatown, a group of laborers and community organizers joined City Council Member John Liu, the city’s first Asian-American elected official, to announce the creation of the Chinese Restaurant Worker’s Project.
The initiative, a project of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, is intended to organize Chinese workers, document abuses, and help provide the workers with collective bargaining power to demand better conditions.
The group reported that one delivery worker is brutally murdered each year. In addition, according to a study by the group, nearly half are below the poverty line,90% do not receive health insurance from their employers, and a quarter come into contact with toxic chemicals while on the job.
While such wage and health abuses are pervasive throughout the restaurant industry, the project’s organizer, Celine Liu, said, Chinese workers are particularly susceptible because of the combination of language problems and a tendency not to question authority. She said there are 20,000 Chinese laborers in the industry, the largest ethnic group among the city’s restaurant workers.