© Toru Hanai/Reuters
Several days after a May 7, 2015 New York Times article, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo created the New York State Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force to look into the accusations. A year later, the task force discovered that 652 employees were owed back wages and damages, Reuters reported.
"The Price of Nice Nails," written by Sarah Maslin Nir, painted a grim portrait of life for tri-state beauticians going unpaid for training periods, receiving criminally low wages and facing a racial hierarchy that placed Korean employees at the top of the food chain with non-Asian workers at the bottom.
In the past year, the task force has launched investigations into 450 nail salons in New York City. So far, 383 have been completed according to the New York Daily News. Many of the investigations have been random, but some have been based on complaints by employees.
The task force looked into whether or not workers made the state-mandated $9 per hour minimum wage. Many shops paid a weekly rate that fell far below minimum requirements. Some employees earned $200 for 40 to 50 hour work weeks. Others did not pay their entry-level employees for their first few weeks on the job at all.
Comment: Capitalism as it is today is detrimental to 99% of the people in the U.S. It has become a psychopathic web of inequality and exploitation designed to benefit those at the top of the food chain.