Nine former employees of the Super Great Wall Buffet in South Portland have filed suit in federal court alleging that their former employer failed to properly compensate them; failed to give them adequate rest breaks;  required them to pay weekly kickbacks and threatened physical harm to those who challenged the workplace policies.  The workers are asking for what they say they're owed in back pay and overtime plus damages.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Portland describes the nine plaintiffs as cooks, buffet staff and wait staff at the Great Wall Buffet from as early as June, 2003, in some cases, to as late as January of this year.  Each employee is said to have worked approximately 70 hours or more a week. 

But according to the suit,  none of the waitstaff was paid any wages. Instead, restaurant owners required them to work for tips only, a violation of mimimum wage and overtime provisions under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Maine Employment Practices Act.  In addition, some employees were allegedly told before they were hired that their food and lodging would be provided and that they could expect to earn $2,800 per month.

"What Maine law requires is that any restaurant worker can be paid up to half of his or her wages in tips but the balance has to be paid in hourly wages," says attorney Jeffrey Young.  Young is representing the workers, who are legally permitted to work in the United States. "So if the minimum wage was $7.00 it means the employee has to be paid at least $3.50 an hour."

Not only do the workers claim they were not being adequately compensated for their 12-hour long shifts, but they say they were required to pay $125 a week to their employer.   When they complained about these alleged "kickbacks," employers Ren Qi Chen, Siow Wooi Chang and son Xue Wen Chen allegedly threatened to terminate waitstaff unless they agreed. 

For a time, the workers did make the payments.  But when several raised the issue again in 2007, their lawsuit claims that defendant Chen threatened them saying, "Whoever dares not to pay, whoever dares to sue, you're gonna die."

Young says the employers also tried to justify the payments as necessary for living expenses.  And he says workers described their living conditions as crowded and unpleasant. "Many of the workers were living in the basement of a house in Portland four to five to a room, they claim without any cooking facilities and squalid living conditions with mold on the walls - the basement would flood in wet weather," Young says.

The rooms were approximately 6 X 10 feet without windows and only a single electrical outlet.  Workers were transported from the house to the restaurant by a van that picked them up every morning around 10:00 and dropped them off by 10:30 or 11:00 pm.  The workers, who speak little or no English, claim they were also denied half-hour lunch breaks after six hours of work. 

They also claim their employer maintained a false set of books to show inspectors from the Labor Department.  The records allegedly understated the number of hours the plaintiffs worked.  And last summer, just before plaintiff Dan Lin was fired for complaining about wage and hour violations,  Lin says defendant Wen allegedly had another employee warn him that if he pursued the case, there could be trouble with Mafia in New York, who could take care of him.

"This case is particularly egregious.  This kind of criminal activity shouldn't be tolerated," says Jei Fong, an organizer with a New York City-based group called the Chinese Staff and Workers Association.  Her group is part of a broader coalition called the "Justice Will Be Served Campaign," which is trying to organize service workers who she says are being exploited in many sectors of the economy.

"I think now people are realizing, you just leave and go to another job it's gonna get worse and worse unless people really take a stand and fight," Jei Fong says.

On Tuesday attorney Jeffrey Young and Jei Fong will join the nine plaintiffs for a news conference in South Portland.  Young says his clients are still fearful of retaliation from their former employer.  A call to the owners of the Super Great Wall Buffet was not returned by airtime.