Employees shut down popular chain restaurant over wages
Print Edition
ABOUT 400 employees of a well-known Sichuan food chain restaurant have been left in a lurch over non-payment of wages.
Nine of the 10 outlets of popular How Way Restaurant have shut down as employees are owed as much as 6 million yuan in back wages.
Tan Weiyi, the vice general manager of the chain, said the arrears started shooting up after one of the partners quit in 2013. He said the two other bosses made too many wrong investments that choked up capital flow.
“Wages for executive staff started getting delayed at the end of last year,” Tan told Shanghai Daily yesterday. “At first the delays were only for several days, eventually started getting delayed by a month and then stopped completely in May.”
Tan said he was owed more than 100,000 yuan and could not even leave without the consent of the company’s owner, Shu Yeuk Fei, who is a Hong Kong resident.
He sought arbitration and compensation from the local human resources and social security bureau but Shu never showed up for the hearings.
“After non-payment of wages started going up, several employees stopped working, forcing the closures of the outlets,” Tan said.
Some of the staff members live in the restaurant outlet at Brilliance Shimao International Plaza on East Nanjing Road after the company stopped paying rent for their dorms.
Tang Zhiqun, a 58-year-old from Anhui Province, has worked in the restaurant for eight years as a security guard and repair worker. He lives there now with his wife, who also worked at the restaurant.
Shu showed up on December 11 to hold talks with the staff. The employees forced him to write a promissory note that he would pay the wages on December 14. He did not show up and has been unreachable since then.
The arbitrators asked Shu to pay 450,000 yuan in wages to 53 employees by December 22 but Shu remained incommunicado.
A local news website thepaper.cn managed to reach Shu, who told it he has been threatened and receives hundreds of insulting messages every day.
He admitted there were financial problems in the company due to rapid expansion and poor management, but said he needed time to pay back the wages.
Shu said he was still looking for investments for his company and that two suppliers who took over the only running restaurant paid the staff.
“We want to reopen the outlets first, but the employees want wages first,” he told thepaper.com.
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