This amazing piece from Sarah Maslin Nir in the NY Times covers the nail salon industry in the Big Apple, where a massive concentration of places to get your nails done has driven prices to half the national average. The true cost however is how workers there, often women of color, are treated as chattel.
Once an indulgence reserved for special occasions, manicures have become a grooming staple for women across the economic spectrum. There are now more than 17,000 nail salons in the United States, according to census data. The number of salons in New York City alone has more than tripled over a decade and a half to nearly 2,000 in 2012.
But largely overlooked is the rampant exploitation of those who toil in the industry. The New York Times interviewed more than 150 nail salon workers and owners, in four languages, and found that a vast majority of workers are paid below minimum wage; sometimes they are not even paid. Workers endure all manner of humiliation, including having their tips docked as punishment for minor transgressions, constant video monitoring by owners, even physical abuse. Employers are rarely punished for labor and other violations.
Asian-language newspapers are rife with classified ads listing manicurist jobs paying so little the daily wage can at first glance appear to be a typo. Ads in Chinese in both Sing Tao Daily and World Journal for NYC Nail Spa, a second-story salon on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, advertised a starting wage of $10 a day. The rate was confirmed by several workers.
Lawsuits filed in New York courts allege a long list of abuses: the salon in East Northport, N.Y., where workers said they were paid just $1.50 an hour during a 66-hour workweek; the Harlem salon that manicurists said charged them for drinking the water, yet on slow days paid them nothing at all; the minichain of Long Island salons whose workers said they were not only underpaid but also kicked as they sat on pedicure stools, and verbally abused.
Last year, the New York State Labor Department, in conjunction with several other agencies, conducted its first nail salon sweep ever — about a month after The Times sent officials there an inquiry regarding their enforcement record with the industry. Investigators inspected 29 salons and found 116 wage violations.
Among the more than 100 workers interviewed by The Times, only about a quarter said they were paid an amount that was the equivalent of New York State’s minimum hourly wage. All but three workers, however, had wages withheld in other ways that would be considered illegal, such as never getting overtime.
Outright wage theft, company store schemes, physical and verbal abuse, and that’s just for starters. The rampant racism and living conditions verging on human trafficking can be much worse. It’s a brutal situation, happening in hundreds of salons just in New York City.
Worker protection laws are there, but when those basic laws of human decency can’t be enforced because of a lack of government resources, lives get destroyed, period.
NotMax
Not to mention the detrimental effects of inhaling the fumes of nail polish and of polish remover all day, every day, in quite likely poorly ventilated settings.
Betty Cracker
I’ve personally never set foot in a nail salon, but I have often wondered how the explosion in the numbers of them over the last 10 years or so was economically sustainable. In my small town, there are five nail salons. Well, now we know how they make a profit at least…
Roger Moore
I wonder the same kind of thing about all the cheap massage places I see, though they also make me wonder if they’re fronts for prostitution.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Man, you can’t be fooled!
Josie
@Betty Cracker: Like you, I have never been to a nail salon, but I have also noticed an abundance of them in both places I have lived. If there is so little oversight and such poor treatment of workers, I wonder how sanitary their practices are. I would be afraid of picking up skin problems from places like that.
marianne19
I have gone on a couple occasions to Vietnamese nail salons here in NH, where they charge $15/$35 for mani/pedi services and was not comfortable with the pricing so left very generous (by NH standards)tips. The Aveda salon prices are $35/$60. I do hope clients can figure out why they’re getting such a bargain.
Gene108
So small business owners are not the bestest people evah…
Kyle
Or as Republicans call it, “The American Dream”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
There are dozens of nail salons in just this suburban area. I admit that I patronize one, as my little luxury. It seems much better than the awful places described in the article – which no doubt exist nationwide.
The place where I go is owned by a young couple, at least one of whom is there daily, and doing nails. As the shop has grown, most of the staff has stayed years. It’s probably to their advantage that the location is on the edge of a very high end neighborhood, and close to a few others, so the regular clientele has plenty of coin, and friends with folks who also do. Everyone is friendly, and the owners both know me by name (“Miss Bella,” they call me – as they do all their customers, save the men, who are “Mr. Client”).
I scheduled a paint once the day before an interview, and the receptionist left me a note “Good luck Bella,” since I came in after her shift. It’s an all around pleasant experience, and I’m confident everyone is treated well. But I can imagine that there are little shops of horror in every town.
ETA@Josie: I’d be pretty comfortable eating off most surfaces in this place; it’s clean as a whistle and the prices quite reasonable but not so low that I have concerns.
srv
You people do know these are all just fronts for money laundering?
Brachiator
Sad, but not surprising. I imagine that many of the workers are illegal immigrants. It is hard to eliminate sweat shop level work. It reminds me of some of the worse car washes in Southern California. A co-workers family owned one, and tried to be fair to workers, but was put out of business by less scrupulous competitors.
Many bad car washes employed undocumented workers and deliberately underpaid them, sometimes skipped regular pay days, shorted wages, etc. If they complained, the workers were fired. There were always new workers waiting to take their place, even when the exploitation was known. The workers would risk being paid at least something rather than have no job at all. And obviously, there were no kind of worker protections here.
jonas
A lot of these salons are also being run by immigrant owners who come from cultures/countries where exploitation of esp. poor women is just routine business practice. So part of it is a cultural issue. It would be nice if they were taught a lesson about how you can’t do that in America, but given our lax enforcement of labor laws in a huge jurisdiction like NYC, it’s no surprise that they figure out pretty quickly that they can just keep on exploiting their employees. On the rare occasion that a business is caught for wage theft, they just close down and reopen in a new location under a new name and by the time the system catches up with them, the poor people they owe money to are too discouraged/lack resources to continue pursuing the case.
CONGRATULATIONS!
A fair number of business in San Francisco operate this way too (semi-slave labor built on human trafficking from Asia) and they are not just nail salons. They run the gamut, in fact.
You won’t see any of the local papers covering it as a systemic issue, though. “Just a few bad apples” is the company line.
Punchy
Yup, this. A few of the Indian restaurant owners in my area are notorious for hiring illegal Indian staff, paying them peanuts, and then stealing all the tips. But it’s better than no work for the illegal servers/cooks, and they often pocket cash tips when the owner is gone. Messed up, it is.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
There are enough of them that I don’t think they can all be fronts for prostitution. That said, I’ve always been leery of those places because I don’t see how they can run them at the prices they’re charging without abusing their employees.
Brachiator
@jonas:
America has a long history of exploitation of immigrant labor. And sweat shops still exist in some industries, notably the clothing industry. It is also, sadly, how some groups begin to get an economic toehold when they come to this country.
Hell, in many places, restaurants, for example, would barely be able to continue in business without underpaid illegal immigrant busboys, waitresses, and other staff.
boatboy_srq
@Kyle: Beat me to it.
MomSense
@NotMax:
The nail polish and polish remover are nothing compared to the solvents used for acrylic nails.
Roger Moore
@jonas:
I would have an easier time believing that if so many white business owners weren’t equally eager to exploit their employees in pretty much the same ways. I think it’s gotten to be a big problem because there isn’t enough enforcement, and the owners have gotten used to getting away with it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Brachiator: I agree with most of your post but not this part. I’ve never met/worked for ANY business owner that would go under by not paying minimum wage. Yeah, it hurts the profit margin, and I know a lot of those owners aren’t making that much money, but it’s not going to put them into a shelter having to pay people minimum wage.
It would sure put most of those workers into one, though.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, kinda like Walmart.
@srv:
No, that’s pizza parlors:
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
There can certainly be a race to the bottom, but this is the down side of free markets. If every business were actually and effectively forced to treat their employees decently, there wouldn’t be a problem. It only becomes a problem when a few businesses try to get a competitive advantage by cheating the system, and the competitive pressure forces everyone to do the same or get run out of business. This is why vigorous enforcement is so important. If you catch the cheats when they’re getting started, you can shut down problems before they grow. If you wait too long, cheating will become pervasive across the industry, and it will be very difficult to root out.
kindness
@Roger Moore: Uhhhh Roger was that snark? Cause if you are getting off by getting your feet rubbed and pampered I don’t really want to know about it.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore:
And have been for some time. Early 19th century cotton farming; mid-19th century tobacco farming; textiles; coal mining; construction; agriculture in general; the list goes on. NOT a new phenomenon, and hardly the exclusive province of “immigrant owners” (DeCoster is a prime example of homegrown employee abuse among that firm’s other crimes). I daresay “immigrant owners” are more visible because of the cultural markers, and the heretofore higher visibility of “minorities”, than for any culture-specific “exploitation”. They’re also because service industries often face wealthier clientele: shoppers in a grocery aren’t face to face with farm labor or in a big box with the folks making their clothes/appliances/furniture, and homeowners don’t hobnob with the building crew – but salons, eateries and other service establishments put the labor up close and personal, and direct contact is unavoidable. It’s the same pattern, but in the salons &c it’s a lot easier to see.
OzarkHillbilly
Behold, the free market at work.
J.D. Rhoades
@jonas:
Isn’t that why they left? By which I mean, they KNOW it’s wrong, they don’t need to be taught.
Roger Moore
@kindness:
I was talking about the massage places as possible fronts for prostitution, not the nail salons. It’s certainly known to happen, and it’s always something to think about when you see a place offering massages for an unreasonably low price.
Omnes Omnibus
@J.D. Rhoades:
Maybe they left because circumstances didn’t allow them to do it their home country, not because they thought abusing workers was wrong.
Tokyokie
Around here (Dallas-Fort Worth), the nail salons are mostly Vietnamese-run, the nonchain doughnut shops Korean run. It just seems to be a niche those ethnic groups have fallen into, perhaps because they’re businesses without a lot of national chain competition (Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t big around here, and Krispy Kreme only has a couple or three stores) that don’t require a lot of capital outlay, but I really don’t know why.
the Conster
Tippi Hedren is responsible for Vietnamese nail salons – she sponsored Vietnamese refugee women in the 70s. She met with groups of them several times trying to figure out what kind of skill they could learn, since they’d lost everything. Over and over the women would make comments about her nails – how pretty they were – and the light went on. She created a certification program, introduced them to her Hollywood friends, and the rest is history. The article I just read about nail salon workers said that most earn a decent living – averaging $640/week. That comports with the sense of the women in my local salon – Vietnamese of course – who live the same suburban life as their clients. I pay as much as $35 for just a pedicure, but they do a great job and take their time. There are a lot of nail salons though, so you really have to be consistent which requires a stable work force. No one likes that feeling when sitting in those chairs that there may be people chained in the back room.
Tree With Water
NYC’s problem is tailor made to be dealt with by the combined expertise of Elaine Benis and Frank Costanza- they’ll know what to do.
OzarkHillbilly
@CONGRATULATIONS!: My little bro and his wife have a small restaurant and catering biz. They pay all their employees above minimum nontipped wage and allow tipping. When they cater, their employees make $20/hr plus a share of the tip if there is one.
They aren’t rich, things are tight, but they’re making it so far (1 year plus).
the Conster
@Tree With Water:
My favorite episode.
srv
@Brachiator: Show me the worst pizza joint in town, and there will be people dining in there.
Show me any nail salon, and it’s empty. My hood has several, and they’re always empty except some light Friday/Saturday afternoon traffic.
Germy Shoemangler
@NotMax:
That was my first thought. They’re in the malls. When I walk past one, the stench is overwhelming. Some of them wear little cloth masks, but breathing that stuff every day can NOT be good.
dogwood
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
What you’re describing is the antithesis of the cheap walk-in nail salon. Beauty shops, barber shops and local pubs are some of the last places where people congregate and establish relationships with people in their community. I’ve had standing nail and hair appointments at the same beauty shop for 35 years. And in that time I’ve had the same nail technician and only three hair stylists. Since I live in a small community, you can’t really make a go of it by only catering to one class of women. So there’s really a great cross section of clients who frequent the place. I especially enjoy seeing the elderly women who come in once a week to get their hair set and combed out. The stylist who caters to these clients is a wonderful woman. One day a week she goes to the nursing homes to service her long-standing clients who can no longer make it to the salon. And when they die, she heads to the funeral home.
shell
I’d always thought there were so many because they’re fairly inexpensive to open; not a lot of start-up costs. But exploiting your workers must help too.
raven
Saul has his office/apartment in the back of one in Albekerk!
Brachiator
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
A fair point. The businesses might be able to do OK with fair wage practices, but they deliberately choose not to pay workers fairly, and this becomes the standard practice. This puts pressure on honest businesses in the same industry.
And as I noted, in Southern California (and probably elsewhere), there is also a dependence on illegal immigrant workers specifically because these workers can be paid lower wages than citizen workers. And even when a minimum wage (or higher) is paid, often the employer skimps on overtime, does not pay Social Security or other employment taxes, etc.
raven
@dogwood: My wife’s hair-whatever rents our house next door!
the Conster
@raven:
I love how he brings his date to sit in the chairs after hours.
raven
@the Conster: And his shit is in the dropped ceiling!
raven
Honestly, is someone surprised by this? I used to hang in the bar of a Chinese Restaurant in Champaign-Urbana. The place had a new front built on an old house and the rooms were home to a bunch of folks who worked there. Twartn’t pretty.
raven
In other news:
OzarkHillbilly
@srv: You ain’t seen some of the pizza joints I have.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Love you long time?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Great. Now I have to watch FMJ tonite.
Brachiator
@srv:
You’re just making shit up.
And, “your hood?”
Germy Shoemangler
Just saw this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg58d8opQKA
TaMara (BHF)
Well that is disturbing, but not surprising. The difference between the salons I’ve seen in larger cities vs. the smaller locations is dramatic.
I used to go to one where it was clear the workers were not happy, so i suspect not treated well. I moved on quickly to a family-owned salon staffed by friends and family. Everyone there seems to be having a great time and it makes for a very pleasant experience. Clean, workers wear masks when needed and gloves at all times. All the tools are sealed in packages.
So you have to decide do you want cheap or do you want some place responsible? For a few times a year treat, I want to go somewhere that doesn’t leave me feeling queasy.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s that duality thing sir!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh yea, the serious digging have begun.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@dogwood: Yup, it’s completely that. Most of the employees live in quite nice suburbs. The woman who does my full meal deal lives in a much nicer place than I could have afforded at her age. And there are gaggles of women who come in together, along with some very older women whose granddaughters bring them.
Mr. Q could not find a barber he liked here, and I kept telling him to go to my dad’s barber. Finally, he went, and mentioned my dad; Ron told him “I used to go up the hill to his house after his stroke and cut his hair there.” Needless to say, Ron is now Mr. Q’s barber.
Also, OT: – Team Bella Q is hard at it. Thunderstorms are predicted for walk day, so I’m trying to get as many online donations as I can. You may join the team without a donation, and you can do so with your nym from here! Full disclosure: NAMI will require an email address, and will send you emails, but you can unsubscribe from their list pretty easily. I will send you a personal thanks but I will not have access to your email addy; the site has a forwarding form. Many thanks to AL for the front page shout also.
@raven: Yay for digging at your place! I hope the news is as good about the MRI.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: cool….
raven
I’m dyin over here. Pets and Yoga and watch the big standard near thew end!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQYK5vT9TBI
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Never mind, you fixed it.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I dunno, maybe it’s a black sheepdog!
eta,, oh yea, I tried the wrong link.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
This is the down side of the real world. In every society, grey markets and black markets exist. And yes, it is made worse when there is a lack of enforcement of work, safety and related rules. And things become egregious when greedy and unscrupulous employers exploit workers.
Cacti
O/T but Stephen Colbert is awesome.
Just personally funded every public school teacher grant request for his home state of South Carolina, on the crowdfunding site DonorsChoose.
Over $800,000 will pay for more than 1,000 projects at 375 South Carolina schools.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: That’s a hoot. I think it’s a black standard also. I’ll be sending that link around.
cmorenc
@Roger Moore:
The women in such places are actually focused quite a bit on taking care of the emotional needs of their clients, so that they leave “happy”.
:=)
Germy Shoemangler
@Cacti: Colbert is a tremendously decent guy. He puts his money to good use. Compare him to some celebrities who take their millions and piss it away on luxuries (Trump). Colbert is in a different league altogether.
Nutella
@Brachiator:
Even more important, workers with no legal status can be treated like shit in every possible way and have nowhere to make a complaint.
The system works.
When we do have an immigration enforcement action, it’s the workers who get deported and the employers are not punished at all. The INS is an integral part of the system of providing exploitable labor to businesses.
Our tax dollars at work.