Susan Kim took her employers to court, and catalyzed
a movement for salon-workers’ rights.
Susan Kim didn’t set out to be the whistle-blower of
New York’s nail-salon industry. In fact, she liked her job at 167 Nail Plaza on
the Upper West Side. “I thought of the customers as my family because they were
so great to me,” she says, with the help of a translator. The salon is near
ABC’s headquarters, and over the years she did the nails of producers and
on-air celebrities. By 2005, Kim was earning $92 a day plus another $70 or so
in tips—nearly $40,000 a year, pretty good money for a salon worker who speaks
little English.
That’s not to say the job didn’t have its drawbacks.
Most days, Kim and her co-workers worked grueling ten-and-a-half-hour shifts
with hardly a break. Sometimes she’d have to skip lunch, carrying home the same
untouched brown bag she’d brought with her in the morning. Her elbow and
shoulder would ache from filing fingernails for hours on end, and the chemicals
she used often left rashes on her forearms. She dreaded requests for silk
wraps— a nail-strengthening process that can take up to 90 minutes—because the
glue and powder made her eyes itch so badly.
As at many nail salons, a number of the workers at
167 Nail Plaza could not speak to each other. Kim is from Korea, and so was her
boss, but most of the manicurists were Chinese. The language barrier put Kim in
a sometimes uncomfortable position: She was one of the only employees who could
communicate with their boss. It was up to her to complain about what the others
could not.
Near closing time on March 17, 2005, Kim made a
suggestion. The boss had said she was planning to hire another manicurist to
replace someone who was quitting. “Why don’t you hire more people?” Kim asked.
“I want to rest, to have breaks.” It was an innocent comment: With more
employees, she figured, everyone would be able to take regular breaks. But her
suggestion didn’t go over well. She was fired the next day.
Kim tumbled into depression. “I was embarrassed to
tell people I was fired,” she says. “I thought people would look down on me.”
At 53 years old, she couldn’t persuade another salon to hire her—not when they
could get a less-experienced manicurist for almost half the price. To make
money, she traveled around the city with her equipment, visiting the homes of
former clients.
One day, a former co-worker suggested she visit the
Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association. For the first time, she learned about
overtime pay and labor laws. It was a revelation. “She was angry, like anybody
would be, if after seventeen years you voice what seems to be a fairly
legitimate complaint and suddenly you’re fired,” says Kenneth Kimerling of the
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The organization filed a
lawsuit on her behalf, charging that Kim’s boss did not pay overtime and had
wrongfully terminated her. And before long, Kim was picketing weekly in front
of her old salon.
Her case went to trial in federal court in October,
and after four days of testimony, Kim prevailed. Her lawyers had asked for
close to $150,000, but the jury did even better, awarding her $182,000 for back
pay, overtime, and damages. News of her courtroom victory raced through the
city’s nail-salon industry. A coalition of groups representing service-economy
workers called Justice Will Be Served! had created a new Nail Salon Workers
Network, and the hotline began buzzing with calls from manicurists alleging
health problems and wrongful terminations.
“I’m really happy,” Kim says. “More than the money,
I’m happy I found justice.” What she wants now is her old job back; her lawyers
have asked the judge to reinstate her. “Some people may think I’m crazy,” she
says. “But I do want to go back to the same salon.” Then she clarifies, “If the
working conditions change.”
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