- Here are the original stories.
- The Price of Nice Nails - NYTimes.com8 hours ago ... The Price of Nice Nails. Manicurists are routinely underpaid and exploited, and endure ethnic bias and other abuse, The New York Times has ...
Perfect Nails, Poisoned WorkersEach time a customer pulled open the glass door at the nail shop in Ridgewood, Queens, where Nancy Otavalo worked, a cheerful chorus would ring out from where she sat with her fellow manicurists against the wall: "Pick a color!" Ms. Otavalo, a 39-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, was usually stationed at the first table.- And here is the essay, published in the New York Review of Books, by a former Times correspondent who is the part-owner of two day-spas.
What the 'Times' Got Wrong About Nail Salons by Richard BernsteinRarely does a newspaper story get the kind of response that The New York Times front-page exposé of wage-theft at nail salons prompted this spring.- As deputy metro editor and head of the metro desk's investigations and projects team, I edited the nails series. Bernstein's article posted on Saturday night, and I felt like certain assertions and factual inaccuracies needed to be addressed right away.
- Here are some of the points I made on Twitter that night and in the following days, collected in one place.
Re:@R_Bernstein in @nybooks challenging NYT's Unvarnished. Here's ad: $10/day 4 apprentice. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jul/25/nail-salons-new-york-times-got-wrong/ … pic.twitter.com/uSiRXxiC2g- For those who can't read Chinese, here's a rough translation: Part-time, full-time. For people with licenses, waxing, small job $75. Can start after 3 p.m. Apprentices $10.
- A bit of context to understand some parts of the ad: "Small job" is an industry term that we mentioned in the article, describing the different job ranks in salons; salons usually have small job, middle job, big job. The ad also doesn't specify per hour or per day. The reporter confirmed that it was referring to per day.
- It is also useful to know that reporting confirmed that these apprentices were basically just beginners, doing the same types of jobs as others in the salon.
- Bernstein seemed to suggest that the ad was fiction, saying in his piece: "It’s not clear whether the reporter saw the ad at all—otherwise why the caveat 'The rate was confirmed by several workers'?" Here's the answer to that:
And @R_Bernstein @nybooks...reason @SarahMaslinNir confirmed w/ workers themselves was to make sure it was not a typo and a real wage.- Mr. Bernstein goes on to say that the lowest wage he was able to find in a classified ad was $70 a day, but Ms. Nir and her team of researchers and translators had a different experience. Here are a sampling of ads taken from World Journal, a Chinese language newspaper, on random dates last year.
- Some other fodder:
- More confusion by @R_Bernstein: he cites Dept of State inspections of his salon. @SarahMaslinNir was citing Dept of Labor. We FOILed data.
- Sinosphere post @R_Bernstein cited confirmed parts of @SarahMaslinNir's reporting, including ethnic caste system. http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/q-and-a-luo-yufeng-a-k-a-sister-feng-on-life-as-a-manicurist-in-new-york/ …
- Media who followed Unvarnished had similar findings, like @ThisIsFusion piece, in which worker paid by commission. http://fusion.net/story/132309/nail-salon-expose-my-manicurist-hadnt-heard-about-it-and-yours-probably-wont-either/#.lwnxkt:EOto …
- Follow to @SarahMaslinNir's Unvarnished, in which reporter went undercover, worked unpaid for 2 wks, paid $50 fee. http://animalnewyork.com/2015/i-went-undercover-as-a-nail-salon-worker-in-nyc/ …
- This is another piece of useful information that provides some context on just how common some of the issues are that were raised in the article. Below is a link to an article published on May 25 in the World Journal, two weeks after the series ran, in which the reporter reached Mr. Long, the owner of NYC Nail Spa, which posted the ad with the $10 wage. He defended himself in the article, explaining "usually apprentices don't receive salaries in nail salons and sometimes they even have to pay a roughly $80 fee. We are being kind for giving apprentices a salary, but we ended being seen as the bad guy."
- Bit of evidence here: owner of salon w/ $10 wage ad in WJ saying most trainees get paid nothing; he was being kind. http://www.worldjournal.com/3256159/article-%E7%BE%8E%E7%94%B2%E5%BA%97%E3%80%8C%E8%B5%B7%E5%BA%95%E9%A2%A8%E6%9A%B4%E3%80%8D-%E6%8E%83%E5%88%B0%E5%90%8C%E6%A5%AD/?npg=1 …
As seen on
m.facebook.com
