Talk about some bad Restaurant Week timing for the Montpelier-based Samosaman Café: As the blog Montpelier Matters first observed on Saturday, the Vermont Department of Labor has issued the downtown café a “stop work order” until the business comes into full compliance with the state’s workers’ compensation law.
As Seven Days first reported in this February 2 article, café proprietor Fuad Ndibalema ran into some legal snafus earlier this year after several of his workers complained to the state that, among other things, they weren’t being adequately compensated under the state’s minimum-wage law. The workers, all Peruvian women who were visiting Vermont as part of the U.S. State Department’s J-1 Summer Work Travel Program, have since left Ndibalema’s employ and returned to their home country.
Now it appears that original investigation turned up other problems. “After an investigation we concluded that, it turns out the different [Samosaman] locations have different corporate ownership and they only had workers’ compensation insurance for the [Winooski] location,” says Steve Monahan, director of workers’ compensation and safety at the Vermont Department of Labor. “Since the statute says that if a business has not complied with workers’ compensation, we’re to order them closed until they get it.”
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2011.
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I ask why is City Market and Hannafords supporting Samosamans illegal doings? Isn’t City Market all about selling local products that do good for Vermont? This guy treats his employees like garbage, doesn’t support the Vermont local movement…doesn’t even hire Vermonters…why city market and hannafords do you continue to support corruption?
While I don’t agree with what Samosaman is doing, how could City Market or Hannafords ever know he was breaking these laws? or who he hires? When you shop at Hannafords (owned by Belgium-based Delhaize Group) do you ask them to prove all employees are Vermonters and they they are complying with all laws?
“how could City Market or Hannafords ever know he was breaking these laws?”Maybe by reading the 7D article on this topic from February?
If it’s made out of beans and rice, has a foreign-sounding name, and is made locally by a minority-owned business, it just HAS to be politically correct and good for you, right?
Should Hannaford and City Market also stop selling grapes from California, soy products from Michigan and milk & apples from Vermont? It’s been well documented that all of these are produced with exploited and illegal immigrant laborers. I agree that the Samosaman is a bad man and I won’t buy his products as a result … but if our grocery stores are going to ban every product produced with exploited labor … we’re all going to be awful hungry.
Has Samosaman actually been found guilty of not paying the full wages to previous workers? If not, I think it’s premature to assume a complaint equals a crime.Second, if he accidentally didn’t have have workers comp, that didn’t mean anyone was injured and didn’t get paid. He just didn’t have the insurance. If he did it on purpose, that’s one thing, but if he just didn’t realize…that doesn’t make him a bad person. Just someone who messed up.Hell, for all I know Samosaman is guilty and maybe he did rip off these Peruvian employees and not have insurance on purpose. But equating a charge with actually committing a crime is unfair. People are charged with crimes all the time they don’t commit. All it takes for you people is for charges to be leveled at someone by a government body or police officer for you to know for a fact they’re guilty?
Josh, the failure to obtain workers compensation insurance might have been a “mistake,” but his treatment of his young foreign workers was clearly not. Here’s the original story:http://www.7dvt.com/2011samosaman-foreign-workers
Given that Samosaman Cafe has reopened, it appears they have satisfied the Vermont Department of Labor, at least in terms of obtaining workers compensation insurance for its employees.