Holy crap! According to NYTimes' blog City Room, Tsue Yue Wang (owner of eight restaurants) has been ordered to pay $8.3 million to workers due to labor and wages mistreatment:

The owner, Tsu Yue Wang, also agreed to allow the Labor Department’s staff to conduct seminars at the restaurants to educate the workers, who are mostly Chinese, about their rights under state labor law. The settlement is the culmination an investigation that began in 2006.

The settlement covered three restaurants named Ollie’s Noodle Shop and Grill, and five others: Ollie’s, Ollie’s Brasserie/Mainland, Japanese Restaurant, Chao Zhou Restaurant and Central Kitchen. (A ninth restaurant in the investigation, Ollie’s Noodle Shop at 200 West 44th Street, near Broadway, has since closed.)

During the investigation, the Labor Department found that one additional restaurant, Tomo, owed 100 workers about $1 million. Mr. Wang claimed he had no affiliation with Tomo, which has since closed, but corporate documents suggested otherwise, and the Labor Department is continuing to try to recoup those wages.

Just because this is amazing, I'm going to bring back that picture of students occupying and protesting Saigon Grill:


It's amazing how far this has come... from protests to settlements. Yeah!

... Since December. How behind are we?

Anyway, woot! This is long overdue.

Another thing that we've heard very little of... until now. The thirty-six current and former workers who sued Saigon Grill "for violating wage laws won a $4.6 million judgment today".

Yay! Read more about it at Grub Street.

The Justice Will Be Served! campaign is alive and kicking. Check out their newest action against Ollie's, (blogged by the NYT here) another chapter in the fight against discriminatory practices at restaurants like Saigon Grill and Flor de Mayo, among others. Nice going!


In other news, my sister's gifting me a copy of Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker when I get home this winter. Will The Blaaag start doing book reviews? (Uhm, depends how quickly I finish...) Oh wait, don't we have two Blaaag writers in Wen Jin's Asian American Literature? Riiight.


P.S. There's good news over at the hunger strike blog. Check it out! (Three of four issues conceded upon? Yes.)

P.P.S. Our co-editor Mar got a picture in the Spectator h-strike vigil slideshow. (Picture nine, here.)


Awww!

If you're new to this blog (and you must be - we officially launched this week), here are some things you should come back to read up on.

• What did members of AAA do this summer? We're sure you were just dying to know! (No, actually, we have some pretty cool stories for y'all.)
  
• Our continual involvement with the Justice Will Be Served! campaign. We're still in the fight.
• Inside The Boardroom: Some changes in the structure and goals of AAA have been brainstormed. Stay tuned to find out about our "turn".