May Day Marchers Take On Nail Salon

Hundreds of protesters roared outside an Elm Street nail salon accused of underpaying its immigrant workers, while the shop’s manager leaned on a parking meter and filmed the scene through his smartphone.

The confrontation was the first of many stops in Monday’s May Day march, along a two-mile route from the Green to Fair Haven. With one Elm City resident scheduled to be deported this Friday and eight Yale graduate students starving in an indefinite fast, Elm City’s social justice community took to the streets for immigrants and workers rights in honor of the international labor holiday.

Less than a block away from the march’s starting point, organizers halted the march in front of Fashion Nail and Spa at 41 Elm St.

“That place, we’re gonna boycott it!” John Lugo, an organizer for Unidad Latina en Acción, yelled through a speaker system loaded onto the back of a landscaper’s truck. Lugo claimed the business hadn’t paid its workers the proper minimum wage, and he later told the Independent that one of ULA’s members is drafting a complaint with a pro bono attorney for backpay from Fashion Nails.

“Boycott!” Lugo shouted.

“Fashion Nails!” the crowd responded.

“Boycott!” they continued. ​“Fashion Nails!”

The salon’s owner, Steven Ledford, filmed the action on his phone. When asked how he felt being publicly addressed by hundreds of marchers, he said he didn’t understand ULA’s allegations. ​“You can’t be in this kind of business if you don’t pay the people. That’s stupid,” Ledford said, as a brass band and a car horn struck up a ruckus outside his salon.

After a New York Times series exposed the problems into Manhattan’s nail salon industry, Connecticut’s Labor Department also cracked down on abuses. In August 2015, the Wage and Workplace Standards Division temporarily issued a stop-work order to Fashion Nails, along with two other New Haven salons, for illegally underpaying workers. After coming into compliance with the law within less than two weeks, the store was allowed to reopen, according to a department spokesperson at the time.

Ledford said the discrepancy in his payments arose because he incorrectly believed that the salon workers were service employees, meaning he could pay roughly one-third less based on the tips the women earned. However, the statute’s definition is very narrowly defined as those who serve food or beverages to patrons seated at a table or booth, leaving out the manicurists.

“They make tips, the tips pretty much cover everything. They make a lot more than minimum wage, believe me. But it’s just not on the paper, you know,” Ledford explained. The Nail and Spa Association of Connecticut is trying to expand the definition of service employees to include those who work at salons, he said, but in the meantime, store owners had been hit with lawsuits, including one forthcoming one from ULA.

Ledford added, ​“I stopped hiring Spanish. That’s why. I don’t hire no more Spanish because of that.” Because of the lawsuits? ​“Yeah, all of this complaining and stuff. I don’t want to deal with it. And it’s safer for me too, so I don’t hire illegals, you know.”

Ledford said that many of New Haven’s other nail salons still hire Hispanic workers. ​“If you go, any nail salon, believe me, most of them have Spanish workers there. And why are they still working there?” he asked. ​“They’re getting paid enough, right?”

Farther Down Grand Avenue

The next stops en route to Fair Haven touched on the full spectrum of causes progressive activists hold dear. Marchers paused in front of Durango Insurance Agency, at 266 Grand Ave., to admire an orange sign covering the barred store, declaring in Spanish, ​“A Day Without Immigrants — No Work, No Shopping, No School — The Children Too.” By Fair Haven Community Health, at 374 Grand Ave., a transgender socialist delivered a speech about the importance of affordable healthcare. And at the spot where Malik Jones was gunned down by East Haven police officers in 1997, activists pushing for greater accountability from law enforcement explained the reforms they’re seeking in a stronger civilian review board.

Kerry Ellington, an organizer for People Against Police Brutality, said that would be accomplished by forming a coalition among the Elm City’s black and brown communities, who’ve been pitted against each other in a ​“historic divide that’s generations-long.” To foment change, African-American groups fighting against brutality are endorsing a formal sanctuary city policy, while immigrant activists are backing the civilian review board reforms, Ellington said — a union formed just in time for an election year. ​“There’s power in us coming together as marginalized communities. There’s a potential in that,” Ellington added.

All along the way, onlookers poured out of apartment buildings, liquor stores and delis to snap pictures of the march. From the second floor of the Grand Medical clinic, supporters stuck their hands out narrow windows and waved white handkerchiefs. One heckler shouted, ​“Build the wall!” Another bystander said, ​“Thank you, forever.”

At the march’s end point, near Fair Haven School, the protestors lined the intersection and held a banner aloft. With bricks lined in black marker, the flimsy sheet represented the wall Trump has called for at the southwestern border. On the Green, protesters had covered it in graffiti. At Lugo’s cue, the marchers ripped the poster to pieces, and children gleefully stomped on the shreds.