He doesn't want to sneeze on your order. But park vendors don't get sick days from their employer, M&T Pretzel. And when an irate customer does something like break a vendor's hand because a Gatorade costs $3--this actually happened a few months ago--the vendor gets no medical coverage. Nor does he get paid vacation. If someone steals a bottle of Hawaiian Punch, the replacement cost comes from the vendor's pocket--at retail price. And if the man who runs the cart wants a hot dog for lunch, he must buy it, too.
For all this, vendors are paid a flat rate of $80 a day, which translates to minimum wage ($5.15 an hour) including overtime--but the extra labor is mandatory and grueling. Workers punch the clock at the M&T garage at 7 a.m. and don't punch out until 8 or 9 at night, when the bosses have accounted for every last bun and Creamsicle. If there's a big event in the park, they won't leave work until 11 or so. They get a $75 bonus for working a six-day week, but that's assuming it doesn't rain or snow--in which case they may be sent home without pay. Now that it's winter, many are furloughed, not working at all.
Before the State Attorney General's labor division got involved in 2002, workers allege, it was common for them to get just $60 or $65 a day--effectively below the minimum wage. According to lawyer Sean Basinski of the Urban Justice Center, who alerted the AG and helped with its investigation, M&T agreed to give back pay, though how much does not yet appear to have been resolved. (The office of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer says it has a policy of not commenting on open cases.)
M&T co-owner Thomas Makkos, a.k.a. "Mike" to workers, declined to be interviewed. "Usually we don't like to give interviews about our business," he says.
Quasi Dahomani worked for M&T from 1997 until a year ago. To his bosses, he says, "I am nothing."
In late 2002, Dahomani led an organizing effort among Central Park vendors, demanding, as he recalls, "a raise, salary, overtime, insurance." He distributed a petition and tried to get workers to a meeting held by the attorney general and Urban Justice Center. But vendors were scared, and the meeting never happened. Soon a snowy winter arrived and Dahomani took the season off. When he returned in early 2003, M&T said it no longer needed him. "I come every week," he recalls. "They give other people jobs, not me."
All this might seem like run-of-the-mill exploitation of immigrant workers who can make far more money at New York's worst jobs than they can in their home countries. Almost all M&T vendors are from Bangladesh, where the average daily wage is less than $2. Typically, these workers are stuck at M&T--to support their families back in Dhaka, they need to maintain their green card status in the U.S.
But working as a Big Apple parks vendor hardly falls in the same league as washing dishes at an immigrant uncle's hole-in-the-wall in Queens. The food carts in Central Park, Washington Square, Battery and other parks make big money for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Each year, M&T pays more than $4 million in concessions fees to the Parks Department for permits for dozens of carts. The most lucrative spot--in front of the Metropolitan Museum--bagged the Parks Department $301,550 last year. The spot on 79th and Fifth, where a 12-year veteran of M&T currently works for minimum wage, brings the city $105,750. Battery Park carts generate more than a half million dollars each year.
