As Immigration dominates the national news coverage, the Restaurant Workplace Project shows how it affects the lives of workers here in Ann Arbor.

The project surveyed immigrant restraunt workers in Ann Arbor. They found that many immigrant workers were denied overtime, received lower pay (sometimes below minimum wage), and were underpaid or not paid on time.

You can download the Restaurant Workplace Project Brochure (PDF, required Adobe Acrobat Viewer), and read more of the results below the fold.

• The majority earn between $6.50 and $8.50 an hour, although a few workers reported that they earn less than minimum wage.
• Nearly half of the workers are on the job more than 40 hours per week, and one in five works more than 50 hours per week.
• Only 37 percent said they consistently receive overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours in a week, as required by law.
• Thirty percent said that they did not always receive the correct amount of pay from their employer. And nearly one in four said they were not always paid on time.
• One-third said their employer paid them less than non-immigrant workers who do the same work and have the same qualifications. An additional one-third was unsure.
• Only 12 percent said they received healthcare benefits as part of their employment.
• Three-quarters of the workers said they had experienced verbal abuse from restaurant supervisors or other workers, and more than four in ten said they had experienced physical abuse.
• Restaurants can be hazardous places to work. Fifty-six percent reported that there were fire hazards in their places of work, 43 percent said that at one time or another it got so hot in the kitchen that it was a health hazard, and between 25 and 40 percent reported some other kind of safety hazard, such as slippery floors, missing guards on cutting machines, or inadequate training in workplace safety.
• Nearly half said they had been cut seriously on the job, and 41 percent had been burned seriously. One in six said they had slipped and injured themselves on the job, one in four came into contact with toxic chemicals, and nearly one in twelve had chronic pain as a result of their work.
• Among those who had been injured on the job, 62 percent said they were either dissatisfied (44 percent) or very dissatisfied (18 percent) with the treatment they received for their injury. Only about one in eight said they had never been injured on the job.
• Only 29 percent of the workers said that, all things considered, their treatment in the workplace was “very fair” (16 percent) or “mostly fair” (13 percent). Half said that their treatment was “somewhat unfair,” and more than one in five workers said that their treatment was “mostly unfair” (8 percent) or “very unfair” (14 percent).