Workers at Genwa, a Korean BBQ chain in the Los Angeles area, have ratified a first contract. The three-year collective bargaining agreement between owners Jin Won Kwon and Jay B. Kwon and the workers’ independent union, the California Retail and Restaurant Workers Union (CRRWU), is the first at a privately owned Korean restaurant in the United States, and covers the company’s three locations in downtown Los Angeles, Mid-Wilshire, and Beverly Hills.

The organizing began five years ago in response to systematic wage theft. In 2017, Genwa’s workers reached out to the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA) for assistance in stopping the violations. Korean front-of-house workers initiated the conversations, and they were soon joined by the company’s back-of-house Latino workers, who raised concerns about hazardous and disrespectful conditions in the restaurants’ kitchens. KIWA, which was founded in 1992 and has a particular focus on the retail and restaurant industry that flourishes in Koreatown, estimates that Los Angeles’s wage workers lose $1.4 billion to wage theft per year.

Genwa’s 325 workers — servers, dishwashers, cooks — were largely Korean, Mexican, and Central American, and the wage and hour violations were rampant. According to a 2010 UCLA survey, 38 percent of Latino workers and 36 percent of foreign-born workers experience wage theft, compared with 10.3 percent of white respondents. Genwa’s workers were routinely made to go off the clock during their shifts, shorted on overtime pay, and denied legally required breaks. KIWA helped the workers file claims with the state and, in 2019, the California Labor Commissioner cited Genwa $2.1 million for the violations, finding that nearly half of the company’s workers were not paid the required minimum hourly wage.