NY Assemblymember Ron Kim: “I Have Never Changed My Stance” on nail salon reform

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By Shirley N Lew
REPRINTED FROM ASAM NEWS

Two articles written in AsAmNews have drawn the ire of New York Assemblyperson Ron Kim, who in 2012 became the first Korean American ever elected in New York State. The articles questioned whether contributions from the nail salon industry to Kim’s campaign had caused him to “flip flop” on reforms to stop the exploitation of nail salon workers. Kim askedAsAmNews for an opportunity to respond.

Shirley Lew: Governor Cuomo issued an emergency order based on the New York Times reporter, Sarah Maslin Nir’s two-part report about the exploitation of nail salon workers in May 2015. (The public editor of The New York Times, Margaret Sullivan later said that Nir’s story “in places, the two-part investigation went too far in generalizing about an entire industry. Its findings, and the language used to express them, should have been dialed back—in some instances substantially.”) However, your reaction to the Nir’s report caused you to co-author a nail salon reform bill, which Cuomo signed in July 2015, but the part of that bill which required nail salon owners to purchase a wage bond (insurance that would be used to pay back wages to workers who can prove they were not paid minimum wage)is now a concern and you want that amended. Why should that not appear that you are turning against the bill that you supported?

Ron Kim: The governor issued the wage bond mandate without any law through his emergency powers in May 2015, a full month before we even had any type of legislation. The process began when he submitted his “program bill”, which is legislation proposed by the governor for consideration. I fought hard to become the main sponsor of his proposal in order to make sure all sides, including worker advocates and small business owners, had an equal voice. I managed to strike out almost 60% of his proposal, including his request to authorize his office to mandate wage bonds. In fact, I even fought to add an extra layer of vetting for any kind of insurance or bond product, and made sure that it had to be applied to the entire beauty enhancement industry – not just nail salons – to prevent discriminatory practices. Here’s a summary of what the governor proposed and the actual statute:

http://nyassembly. gov/member_files/040/20150617/ index.pdf

Assemblymember Ron Kim

So if the law that was passed curtailed his ability to impose the wage bonds, how did he enforce it? By extending a “state of emergency” against nail salons for one year, giving him special unilateral powers; kind of like the President having unilateral emergency powers during war time. This executive action caused small businesses to sue the governor and file for an injunction, which was rejected by a state judge appointed by the governor.

In short, I continue to support the legislation I passed, and have never changed my stance. It’s my responsibility as a legislator to oversee the application of the law we actually agreed to. I strongly believe the governor is the one who flip-flopped in not following the statute he signed. Instead, he chose to use his executive privilege to enforce regulations in a manner not authorized by the final bill.

Shirley Lew: So Cuomo’s imposed wage bond now extends to beauty salons and others in the “appearance-enhancement” industries. You feel the wage bond is too heavy of a financial burden for many of these small businesses and that there has been unfair assessment on many of the businesses. According to a recent article in Slant, you said some businesses were forced to shut down because they can not afford to purchase a wage bond. If somone said to you now, “Cuomo is a big supporter of safe work conditions and small businesses.” How would you respond to that?

Ron Kim: There is no mention of “wage bonds” anywhere in the law. We stipulated two conditions for all new insurance products: They must apply to the entire beauty enhancement industry (35,000 plus businesses), and must be vetted properly and certified as “readily available in a competitive market” by the Dept. of Financial Services. We put this in to make sure the governor can’t just single out nail salons (4,000 stores) with a new product – especially one that redlines immigrants without credit history. He chose to do so unilaterally anyway.

We have endless emails and phone call recordings that document our research on wage bonds, and how unfit they are for small business industries. There’s even a public blog pointing to the problems regarding wage bonds:

http://www.ronkim.com/ronkim/ from_the_experts_re_bond_ liability_insurance_for_nail_ salons

Before I became more vocal and publicly denounced Governor Cuomo’s decision-making, I tried hard for almost 3 months to work with them in resolving these issues. Their response to me was, “Ron, it’s politically impossible for us to go back on wage bonds.” That’s when I realized I was being naive in thinking that they actually cared about real solutions. They only cared about politics and controlling the optics of public perception, even if it meant using false, damaging stereotypes of Asian small business owners as “bad people” trying to exploit workers and harm consumers for a quick buck.

Anyone who questioned them would be crushed by their team of media hawks, who worked around the clock to discredit any critics by planting negative stories of them.

RELATED:

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• Nailed: Human trafficking in the Asian American community
• New York nail salons clipped

Shirley Lew: What are your suggested revisions to the Governor? Does he agree? What has been the most recent dialogue you’ve had with the Governor on this?

Ron Kim: My suggestion has always been the same. Provide some real funding for programs that help workers, and hold the real culprits accountable – the manufacturers producing toxic nail products.

Here’s a letter that I sent directly to the governor at the very beginning of his task force and new rules in May 2015.

Instead of allocating anything to support workers or small business owners, his mandates (wage bonds and now ventilation systems) enrich big corporations at the expense of mom and pop store owners.

Here’s another Huffpost op-ed published in June 2015 (co authored with Chris Kui from AAFE), requesting training dollars for immigrant workers: http://m.huffpost.com/us/ entry/7493626

Shirley Lew: How have the Korean Nail Salon Association and the Chinese Nail Salon of East America been responding lately?

Ron Kim: They are beyond frustrated and angry because they feel voiceless and powerless. One recently told me they believed there will be tragic consequences for some of the many store owners forced to shut down, especially those who feel like it’s the end of the road. We read about immigrants committing suicide and always wonder at those moments why no one stepped in to support them. Well, I believe the governor still has a golden opportunity to be a hero.

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New York nail salons clipped; owe workers $2 million in back wages

THE NEW YORK STATE Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force directed 143 nail salons to pay $2 million in unpaid wages and damages to 652 employees. As the anniversary of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s creation of the task force, and subsequent enactment of industry reforms approaches, industry workers and their advocates are heralding this recovery as another example of the “significant progress” Cuomo’s initiatives have ushered in.

“New York State is cracking down like never before on the unscrupulous individuals that take advantage of the hardworking people they employ,” Governor Cuomo said. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work is a principle that this state was built upon and this administration is committed to stopping employers who exploit workers and deny them what they are rightfully owed.”

Nail salons already paid $1.1 million in back wages earlier this year, as the state continues to probe the nail industry following last year's New York Times investigative articles that found widespread underpayment and a pretty loose grasp of state labor laws.

RELATED: Nailed - Human trafficking in the Asian American community and the price of silence

Now, the New York Daily News reports, Cuomo is set to announce that the state’s Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force has ordered a total of 143 salons to repay 652 workers, for a sum of $2 million in all.

Many salons employed undocumented workers who were forced to work for low wages out of fear of deportation. The shops were paying a weekly rate that was far below minimum wage, such as handing workers $200 for 40- to 50-hour workweeks. That is about half of minimum wage in the state of New York, which is currently $9 per hour. According to the NYTimes investigation by reporter Sarah Maslin Nir, some salons were paying workers nothing when they first started, until they proved their skills were up to par.

"Immigrant Asian and Latina workers now have more access to the licensing process, protections and training; and they know that the nail salon workers bill of rights and enforcement of the minimum wage and health and safety laws is on their side," said Charlene Obernauer, executive director of New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health.

After the NYTimes expose', Cuomo created the Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force to address widespread exploitation and abuse of nail salon workers. Since that time, the task force, led by the New York State Department of Labor, has opened investigations into more than 450 nail salon businesses, with 383 being completed to date.

Following the task force’s creation, New York State enacted a series of nail salon industry reforms, ranging from a workers' bill of rights to protective equipment standards to posting notices in multiple languages including Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese.

A lawsuit filed by Korean and Chinese nail salon owners claiming that the original NYTimes articles were biased and questioning the need for state-mandated reforms, was dismissed by the New York courts in December 2015.

“The changes have been noticeable, now we are not forced to work 13-hour days without proper hourly wages," said Martha Narvaez, a nail salon worker. "Owners of salons cannot get away with free labor. If it's slow, we can go home, and if it's busy, we are happy to work more and earn more money.”

Nailed: Human trafficking in the Asian American community and the crime of silence

MANICURES and pedicures used to be vanities relegated to the rich, to that class of women who have nothing better to do than to look good. Nowadays, the procedures are so inexpensive, its as accessible and commonplace as having a haircut.

There's a reason the prices have come down so dramatically and it doesn't paint a pretty picture.

The recent series of articles that appeared in the New York Times this week, "The Price of Nice Nails", exposes the underside of all the manicures and pedicures loved by New York residents. New York City has the highest concentration of these shops catering to women of all classes. San Francisco and Los Angeles, the next largest concentrations of nail salons, have half as many per resident.

Its a form of human trafficking. Most people think human trafficking takes the form of prostitution. Sex trafficking is only one - albeit the most publicized - form of human trafficking. Contrary to popular belief, most of the sex trafficking victims are U.S citizens, not immigrants. 

Labor trafficking in the Asian American community is something no one wants to talk about. It is one of those stones no one wants to turn over for fear of what you might discover. But almost every new Asian immigrant knows someone, or is related to someone, who has been or is currently is in a trap between unscrupulous employers and the fear of deportation.

"Human trafficking," said President Obama, "must be called by its true name—modern slavery.

"Now, I do not use that word, 'slavery,' lightly," he said. "It evokes obviously one of the most painful chapters in our nation’s history. But around the world, there’s no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape—that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving—that’s slavery."


Most of the women working in these salons are immigrants from Asia. Poor families often take loans or use their life savings to pay labor recruiters to take their daughter, sister or wife to America with the promise of untold fortune and opportunity. Some are enticed by promises of marriage to American citizens.

They speak little English and often paid below-minimum wage salaries. Their shaky immigration status makes them vulnerable to exploitation by their employers. 

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7 steps to guilt-free manicures

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines labor trafficking as: "The recruitment, harboring, transportation provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery."

Labor trafficking is not limited to nail salons and it is not just a New York problem.

Part of the work I do in California is helping our local agencies educate the public about human trafficking, helping the victims connect to services and making sure that those exploiters, those pimps or manipulative employers are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. In the Bay Area, we have formed a collaborative of law agencies and nonprofits to combat the the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world with as many as 27 million individuals living in slavery-like conditions throughout the world. That is more enslaved people than existed during the American Civil War.

Victims of labor trafficking can be right under our noses. Besides nail salons, they can be found in garment-makers' sweatshops, attendants in nursing homes, or laborers in construction, agriculture, or as domestic servants working in the homes of the well to do or politically connected.

Labor abuse is probably most widely practiced in the restaurant industry where workers live in cramped quarters, work for low wages and their passports taken from them. In one northern California case, a Chinese restaurant was closed down and as investigators gathered their evidence, all their workers disappeared the next day. The employers gave them bus tickets to their restaurants in other cities or states, or they simply went into hiding. The investigators lost their witnesses. Some workers were eventually tracked down and convinced to testify so the district attorney could file charges against the restaurant owners.

Another case prosecuted in northern California involved owners of group homes that cared for the elderly. It was found that workers in these homes were untrained and underpaid and forced to work long hours without compensation.

Trafficking in human beings is rampant in California where victims can disappear into the large Latino and Asian networks. Language difficulties and fear of deportation make victims hesitant to come forth. In some instances, threats to relatives in their home countries reinforces their fear as is a pending case involving bakery workers in southern California.

Nail salons may be in the spotlight now, but the first series of labor abuses in that industry began appearing seven years ago. In some cases, after a long day of pampering customers, at night the women were forced into prostitution. The hoopla generated by the NYTimes just shows how influential and widely read the Gray Lady is. The mayor and governor promised to crack down on those illegal practices.

Law enforcement agencies have made human trafficking among their top priorities along with drug dealing and the illegal sale of weapons.

So what is one to do if you're hooked on this aspect of personal grooming? (Liberals are just as apt to have their nails done as conservatives.) Tipping more probably won't help. That just means more money for the owner if he/she decides to share the tips at all.

If you are really torn about the possibility that the woman painting your nails is being exploited, Slate makes a good point on this: "Consider asking your state legislator to properly fund the state labor department so that it has enough manpower to look into these abuses. Remember, there are similar problems across all sorts of industries, especially restaurants. (The poor guy delivering your Chinese food through the rain? There's a strong chance he's living off nothing but tips, as well). Leaving your manicurist an extra $5 isn't going to solve them."

The next time you feel like indulging yourself by getting your nails done and the cost is less than getting a meal at McDonalds, maybe its time to reconsider your options. Its your choice.

If you suspect human trafficking, or you're a victim:

Call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-373-7888.

Here are some cues to look for that might indicate human trafficking is taking place. 
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) is a national, toll-free hotline available to answer calls from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. The NHTRC is not a law enforcement or immigration authority and is operated by a nongovernmental organization funded by the federal government.