Join us as we kick off the tenth anniversary year
of the Justice Will Be Served! (JWBS!) Campaign, celebrating our
recent victories at Golden Bridge and Zen Palate restaurants.
Over the past ten years, JWBS! has already transformed the working
conditions and lives of working people all over the tri-state
area. Chinatown restaurant workers were first instrumental in
exposing the existence of sweatshop conditions in the U.S. Their
struggles have sparked a wave of organizing activity that has
changed the entire Chinatown restaurant industry. Many workers
no longer work 70 hours a week, but 40 hours a week, allowing
them more time to take care of their health and their families.
JWBS! has also influenced the government to be more accountable
to working people by preventing a freezing of the NY State minimum
wage for tipped employees and by setting a precedent for holding
individual owners accountable for labor violations.
In September Latino and Chinese workers at Zen Palate, a popular
vegetarian restaurant in Union Square, organized and won over
a million dollars for more than 100 workers and improved conditions
for more than 300 workers at the restaurant’s four locations.
Workers receive more income and many work fewer hours and have
more control of their time.
This past June, after 18 months of picketing in front of Chinatown's
Golden Bridge restaurant, workers and supporters of the JWBS!
Campaign ended the discrimination against the 318 Restaurant Workers
Union members and forced the restaurant to hire 15 of the union
members and compensate them for their lost wages. This victory
has broken the blacklist against workers organizing in Chinatown,
impacting workers in the community and beyond, by providing more
space for people to organize, despite limited protections under
the law.
Employers, such as those at East Buffet and Ming Dynasty continue
to abuse the employers’ sanctions law (IRCA 1986), which
criminalizes and creates an underclass of undocumented workers,
to keep working people from coming together to improve conditions.
Despite this escalating attack against working people, undocumented
and documented workers are increasingly coming together. Workers
at Chinatown restaurants Harmony Palace, Jing Fong, and 88 Palace
are now organizing and suing their boss for labor violations.
This is also spreading outside Chinatown to Majestic Buffet in
New Jersey, Our Place in Midtown, Bay Plaza in Brooklyn and many
more. The victories at Golden Bridge and Zen Palate have also
influenced workers beyond the restaurant industry, at 167 Nail
Plaza, Brooklyn Food Bazaar supermarkets, construction workers,
and deli workers, as JWBS! continues to expand.
With these recent victories, the walls between our communities
are breaking down: undocumented and documented, citizens and immigrants,
and workers from different communities are increasingly coming
together. Join the celebration! Especially if you work in the
service industry, from offices to hotels to restaurants, we invite
you to come and help build our campaign by engaging in our ongoing
struggle to change the future of working people.
Justice Will Be Served! Is a coalition of organizations, including
318 Restaurant Workers’ Union, Chinese Staff and Workers’
Association, National Mobilization Against Sweatshops.
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