But Would We Still Have The Same Dim Sum Experience If The Push-Cart Ladies Were Unionized?

If you wondered whether the ass-busting waitstaff at Chinatown’s Jing Fong was underpaid rest assured that the management definitely screws them over:

It is where Chinese families and hungry tourists flock on Lunar New Year, braving hourlong waits to savor plates of dim sum plucked from steaming carts. It is always one of the first restaurants to become fully booked on Thanksgiving, the busiest day for weddings in Chinatown, with multiple banquets over multiple shifts. It is where the daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, was honored in 1995.

It is Jing Fong, whose dining room has a capacity of 1,300, making it the largest restaurant in Chinatown and perhaps New York.

But a lawsuit filed by six waiters in Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday charges the restaurant with violating the minimum-wage laws.

. . .

Under New York State law, waiters who are paid hourly rates below the minimum wage, now $6.75, are supposed to keep all their tip income, though it can be redistributed among the waiters.

But the six waiters charge that Jing Fong has been using money from the tip pool to pay the women who push the dim sum carts, without paying them an hourly wage. In addition, the waiters say that the restaurant has been taking up to 35 percent of the service charge that is added automatically to the bills of large groups.

They also say that about $2,500 is inappropriately taken each week from the tip pool. The waiters say they earn $20,000 to $25,000 a year and have no benefits.

The owners of the restaurant say they abide by the labor laws, having hired labor lawyers in the 1990’s to inspect their operations.

“Our way of practice is 100 percent legal, otherwise my attorney wouldn’t let me do it,” said Ming Lam, whose family is an owner of Jing Fong. Mr. Lam says the dim sum women do receive an hourly wage in addition to the money they get from the tip pool. “They have a base salary the same as the waiters and the busboys and the captains, and they get their tip share from the tip pool,” he added.

He also said that while the restaurant did take 35 percent of the service charge from large groups of 30 or more, the law permitted them to do so for reservations that were considered banquets. “When a reservation is done through management, when the menu is done through management, that is a banquet,” he said.

Mr. Lam said he did not know that the waiters were complaining about the service charge policy. “They should have brought it to my attention, but they never did,” he said.