@stopchrisquinn Christine Quinn got the crap booed out of her at the fast food strike closing rally at union square #829strike
— A People's History (@PeoplesHistory) August 29, 2013
Christine Quinn just got booed off the stage at #829Strike
— OWS People's Puppets (@Power2thePuppet) August 29, 2013
.@Quinn4NY watered down #livingwage until it helps only 500 ppl. http://t.co/JeiTCNXUf6 @zarafa @USRealityCheck @Power2thePuppet #829Strike
— Stop Christine Quinn (@stopchrisquinn) August 30, 2013
New York City mayoral candidate John Liu is the "only candidate who has called for eliminating the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, and increasing the minimum wage to $11.50 per hour, significantly higher than the $9 supported by President Obama. He is also the harshest critic of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ; he describes Mr. Bloomberg as a 'grumpy' man who 'checked out a long time ago,' ” reported The New York Times.
For employees of restaurants, even trendy ones, having a job doesn't mean that you will get paid.
In January 2010, The New York Times reported that the popular Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Grill was facing allegations of "harassing and firing workers who protested age discrimination and expressed support for joining a union." These were the second set of labour violations against Saigon Grill.
In 2008, "... Saigon was forced to pay $4.6 million to its deliver workers, after a federal judge found that the owners at the time, Simon and Michelle Nget, regularly violated minimum-wage and overtime laws, paying their employees as little as $1.65 an hour," reported the Columbia Spectator.
All across New York City, restaurant employees were not getting paid. Employees of Flor de Mayo, Tomo Sushi, Vine Sushi and Sake, and Ollies, a popular restaurant with multiple locations, had to resort to legal action to collect their due wages.
Many of the restaurants, which owed employees millions in unpaid wages, filed for bankruptcy.
Many restaurant employees were not paid overtime, and the hourly wages that they were paid were "well below legal limits."
It's not known, but it was suspected, that the bankruptcy filings were a way for the restaurants to try to avoid making full payment of the back wages rightfully owed to their employees. Bankruptcy reorganisations allow companies to continue operating whilst they try to restructure or renegotiate their debts.
Restaurant employees, who work as deliverymen, are often immigrants with low occupational skills or language barriers, and many probably believe that they have no choice but to put up with the wage fraud by their employers. Some of the employees were "required to work 11 to 13 hours a day, usually six days a week," The New York Times reported, for example. Deliverymen at Saigon Grill were found to have been paid approximately $2 an hour. In their work situation, it would be easy for unscrupulous employers to exploit vulnerable employees.
Employees at popular New York City restaurants are not the only ones, who are risk of not getting paid their due wages.
What would have happened to the wage dynamic in New York City, had Wal-Mart been allowed to set up some of its huge stores here ?
Recently, a new labour movement was launched around employees at fast food restaurants, too. All this talk brings us to the issue : what is a "living wage" ?
Just because you might have a restaurant job in some of New York City's most busiest restaurants, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can count on your rightfully complete paycheck, much less a living wage.
What does this say about our economy, if the success of some businesses are premised on finding ways to seriously underpay their employees ?
The information about Saigon Grill and Ollies was from 2008 to 2010. Earlier this year, five locations of East Japanese Restaurants agreed to a court settlement for underpayment of and backwages to 225 current and former waiters, runners, and bussers for $1.25 million.
Are service industry employees being routinely exploited ?
To find out how real journalists assess City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's record, one needs to look no further than the sensibility expressed in this blog post on True News From Change : NYT Sets the Definition on How To Judge and Pick the Next Mayor and It Fits Quinn
In his blog post, the journalist Gary Tilzer makes many astute observations about David W. Chen's infomercial fluff piece about Speaker Quinn, and perhaps this is the most sharpest of Mr. Tilzer's criticisms : ''It was the publisher of the NYT, along with the NYP and Daily News, that used their papers to support changing the term limits law to allow Bloomberg and Quinn to run for a third term. Mr. Chen does not challenge Quinn when she brushes off her term limits and other critics as 'naïve' ideologues.''
It's already been documented how Christine Quinn bluffs her way through important social issues.
What Speaker Quinn is doing by making her ''unapologetic'' ''move to the middle'' is selling out the working class families of New York City. Her policies favour real estate developers -- and come to the detriment, suffering, and mass displacement of working class New Yorkers. Speaker Quinn's vision of New York City is a continuation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vision : more glass and steel luxury condos and less hospitals, firehouses, public schools, and senior centers. Speaker Quinn wants to make life so unbearable to the average wage-earning New Yorker that we all pick up and leave town.
How do we know that Christine Quinn has sold out her values and beliefs and still find herself to be in a place of denial about it, so much so that she accuses her critics of being “naïve” ideologues ?
Speaker Quinn's ideas about leadership in New York, by supporting the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital, which used to be the only full-service hospital with a Level 1 Trauma Center below 14th Street, is like GLAAD publicly supporting the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Not only would AT&T be in an even stronger position to undo net neutrality, but what is GLAAD doing by meddling in a telecom merger approval process with the FCC ? Likewise, why is a ''supposedly!! celebrated LGBT third-term politician like Christine Quinn rushing toward the ''middle'' of the political spectrum, if it means that she has to abandon her idealistic beginnings and instead now oppose paid sick leave and a living wage bill ?
"AT&T was one of the companies whose local representatives sits on the board of directors of the Tennessee chamber of commerce," wrote John Aravosis at Americablog. "You remember them, the group that endorsed and actively lobbied for the measure repealing gay and trans rights ordinances in the state, mandating it so that no trans person can ever change their birth certificate gender in the future, and banning any future civil rights ordinances for anyone in the future. That AT&T."
What does the intersection of St. Vincent's Hospital/Rudin Family Luxury Condo Conversion and the GLAAD/AT&T T-Mobile mega deals have to do with Christine Quinn and New York City politics ?
In each case, you see the erosion of core values of fighting for an activist's central reason for being : serving their constituency. But once you get to be so big, you can blow off you constituency as “naïve” ideologues (or drop the F-bomb on them, the way that one of her administrative assistants did).
If, throughout our nation's history, our goal has been to distribute power and authority equally among voters, then the voters, who have less choices on election day, get their voices muffled. Who is going to challenge GLAAD to focus once again on its original intention ? Who is going to put pressure on Christine Quinn to deliver on the community’s demands to stop all the hospital closings that are happening across New York City ?
It is not too much to expect that the people, who you elect to City Council, start to deliver something tangible for New York City voters.
Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn refuses to support the Living Wage Bill, just like she squashed the Paid Sick Leave Bill, because she is in bed with special interest groups that oppose the middle class.
The Poverty in America blog has exposed the reason why Speaker Christine Quinn would not endorse the Paid Sick Leave Bill and why Speaker Quinn also opposes the Living Wage Bill : both laws are being targeted for defeat by a shady anti-middle class group calling itself the 5 Boro Chamber Alliance.
The 5 Boro Chamber Alliance was formed in 2009 to take down the Paid Sick Leave Bill, and now it is reportedly organising a political campaign to defeat the Living Wage Bill.
The Poverty in America blog is worried that the Living Wage Bill will be defeated the same way as the Paid Sick Leave Bill was defeated : each were opposed by Speaker Quinn.
''Quinn's silence isn't random; she's declined to take a position on either bill because of pressure from the city's business interests. One of the main business groups that spoke out against paid sick leave was the 5 Boro Chamber Alliance, a group of chambers of congress from around the city,'' reported the Poverty in America blog.
Based on her history, more and more people are worried that we can't count on Speaker Quinn to do the right thing. ''We know what her position was on the paid sick leave bill and how mindful she has been not to cross the business community as she plans a run for mayor in 2013. Let's hope this time the speaker will think first and foremost of the well-being of the great majority of New Yorkers,'' wrote Albor Ruiz from The New York Daily News.
