Abstract
Introduction
Beginning in September 2015, tens of thousands of Chinese restaurant workers spread across the Eastern United States began to join an online group on WeChat, the largest Chinese social media platform to share their workplace complaints with fellow restaurant workers. While many workers have long experienced the common exploitative practices in the Chinese and Asian restaurant industry in the United States, hereafter referred to as the industry, for the first time their experiences became visible to a significant mass almost instantaneously through the mobile application WeChat. This phenomenon highlights the power of information and communication technologies (ICT), specifically social media, to draw massive numbers of people into contentious labor politics. Existing literature on the use of social media in labor activism has tended to focus on organized labor, specifically on labor unions (see case studies Blanc 2021; Geelan and Hodder 2017; Lazar, Ribak, and Davidson 2020; Fowler and Hagar 2013). This also means that scholarly attention is primarily focused on the instrumental and intentful uses of ICT. However, many Chinese immigrant workers do not participate in any worker organizations and have not collectively developed digital strategies to challenge unfair practices in the industry. Thus, more case studies of how unorganized workers make use of social media to resist, and a study of the limitations of these digital practices are necessary to better theorize the role of social media in labor resistance.
This article provides one such case study by examining how Chinese restaurant workers in the United States make use of social media to reclaim labor agency in the industry. Using digital ethnography as the primary method of investigation, the study traces the establishment of a blacklist of Chinese and Asian restaurants in the United States, primarily used by Chinese restaurant workers to alert fellow workers of unscrupulous restaurants making it difficult for the named business to fill job vacancies. Following the blacklist, the article connects two important bodies of literature within labor studies; how unorganized workers resist and the use of social media in labor and political activism. The article illustrates the potential of social media and its limitations in articulating agency of unorganized workers. In explicating the successes and the challenges of the blacklist on WeChat, this article's main argument is that while social media can be a powerful tool for unorganized workers to initiate the process of building collectivity, the capacity to build power, however, is limited by the nature of the technological medium itself. Conceptually it complicates Katz's topology of human agency, namely resistance, resilience, and reworking (Katz 2004) in that the nature of social media muddles workers’ actions into multiple categorizations illustrating the fluidity of such a formulation. These findings should help labor scholars and practitioners better theorize the future of social media in labor activism among unorganized workers.
The context of this study is the drastic changes in the industry since the 1990s, characterized by the proliferation of Chinese and Asian restaurants outside of traditional immigrant gateway cities such as New York City and Los Angeles (Wu 2019, 2024) and the ubiquitous use of smartphones and social media, specifically the WeChat platform, by the new generation of young Chinese restaurant workers. This shift to social media is symptomatic of the demographic change in Chinese migration to the United States during the past three decades. Unlike the earlier generation of Chinese migrant workers, the younger generation is more technologically savvy and can make use of all the capabilities that smartphones offer. This shift has reorganized the industry in unintentional ways. For example, some employment agencies that line East Broadway in Manhattan's Chinatown are closed for business because job hunting can be done more efficiently online. In the past, workers seeking employment had no option but to visit these brick-and-mortar agencies and demanded a $30 dollar fee for every successful job secured. Today, the job search service is offered for free online. Mobile applications such as 美国58 and New York News, alongside interest-based WeChat accounts, offer job postings and many other professional services such as information on immigration, legal assistance and applying for governmental welfare. From the employer's standpoint, they prefer to post jobs on these online platforms because they are in direct contact with workers, effectively eliminating the “middleman.”
The ubiquitous use of smartphones and social media among young Chinese restaurant workers elicits questions about how these workers make use of technologies to help them contend with the realities of their working conditions in the industry. And to what extent have these practices been productive in improving their work experiences? This article addresses these key issues using a case study that contributes to a nuanced theorization of the role of social media in labor politics. Whereas existing literature has either minimized the role of social media in activism (Blanc 2021; González-Bailón 2013)—arguing that its efficacy depends on the user—or overemphasized its technological potential (Geelan and Hodder 2017). This article illustrates the nature of social media determining its efficacy as well as areas that set limitations to its technological potential.
The case study of the development of a blacklist of Chinese and Asian restaurants in the United States on Chinese social media is explored in the following four sections: The first section draws from labor studies and recent scholarship on social media in political activism to highlight the gap in the literature on how unorganized workers make use of ICT to change their work conditions. Addressing this gap not only sheds light on how unorganized workers find ways to address labor discontent but also speaks to the future role of social media in labor and political activism in general. The Unorganized Labor Agency and Social Media Activism section discusses digital ethnography as the primary method used in this study. The Methodology section analyzes the WeChat platform as a unique social media space that enabled workers to build collectivity and facilitated the virality of the blacklist. The WeChat Platform: The First Super-App section analyzes the development of the blacklist of Chinese and Asian restaurants by Chinese workers on WeChat. It covers its initial success in building collectivity among the atomized workers as well as its limitations as the blacklist went viral. The concluding section discusses implications to the role of social media in future labor and political activism.
Unorganized Labor Agency and Social Media Activism
Much of the existing literature on labor resistance is centered on labor unions and collective bargaining (Rogaly 2009). This focus on established labor institutions overlooks many workers who are “unorganized,” especially immigrant and racialized workers who have been historically excluded from labor unions. While more recent literature has expanded to include other alternative labor institutions such as worker centers and co-ops, they have nevertheless remained focused on structured institutions. However, a significant number of workers continue to navigate the world of work outside of organized labor. The lack of scholarly attention on unorganized labor is not surprising given methodological and political considerations that govern the subject of unorganized labor. Methodologically, it is easier for scholars to gain access to organizations and institutions for research rather than atomized individuals or groups of workers. Further, it is politically expedient to research on/with organized labor as their practices tend to be more publicly visible allowing more room to draw attention to the labor conflicts.
In labor geography where scholars emphasize workers’ agency in reshaping capital-labor relations (Rogaly 2009; Castree 2007; Coe 2013; Herod 2001; Mann 2007), there has been an increasing call for more scholarly attention on unorganized workers and their acts of labor discontent (Anwar and Graham 2020; Lier 2007). It is argued that the everyday acts of resistance from workers in the absence of formal organizing can also change the way how capital operates. Much of the literature exploring these “weapons of the weak” stems from James C. Scott's (1977) nominal study on how seemingly powerless peasants reconfigured power relations through individual acts. Scott contends that much of the political theorizing has focused on forms of resistance that are public (e.g., strikes, protests, etc.), but has failed to account for how defiant acts that take place in the private realm, or the “hidden transcripts” to potentially reconfigure power relations. Scott makes a clear case not to romanticize these hidden transcripts but states that they should be treated as spaces of struggle. This theorization elicits inquiries of to what extent can social media be a weapon of the weak and how effective can it be in implementing change.
Since Scott's study scholars have offered various case studies to develop more fine-grained analyses of everyday forms of worker resistance (Lee 1998; Kelly 1996; Whitson 2007; Antje 2010). A useful framework analysis comes from Katz (2004) who offers a topological categorization of agency; resistance, resilience, and reworking. For Katz (2004, 251), resistance requires “a critical consciousness to confront and redress historically and geographically specific conditions of oppression and exploitation.” This could include large-scale activities such as strikes, protest, and as well as lesser confrontational activities such as wage negotiations and using work material for nonwork purposes (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999). Resilience refers to small acts of “getting by” or coping with everyday realities without necessarily changing existing social relations (Katz 2004, 244). These acts can include education, training, and mutual care. Reworking involves pragmatic activities that directly address the issues faced by people such as creating new work methods to meet new demands from employers. While Katz's topology provides a helpful lens to frame workers’ acts, the data of this study will illustrate that the nature of social media makes the categorization ambiguous and fluid as resistance displayed at the beginning can succumb to practices of reworking later on.
The reformulation of Katz's (2004) topology spotlights the nature of social media and its uses in labor and political activism. Following the dominant scholarly focus on organized labor, much of the literature on the use of ICTs such as social media in labor activism has also centered on labor unions and their affiliates. For example, in a comparative study of teachers’ strikes in Arizona and Oklahoma (Blanc 2021) argues that varying digital strategies used by union leadership affected the protest outcomes. Geelan and Hodder (2017) examine the digital activities of a UK-based organization in fostering solidarity between trade unions and worker movements. Lazar, Ribak, and Davidson (2020) explore the use of social media by union activists in three successive campaigns to unionize workers in Israel. Fowler and Hagar (2013) point to the increasing use of new social media by Canadian unions in electoral strategies. Central to all these studies is the question of whether social media has been productive and/or effective in furthering the goals of organized labor.
Outside of organized labor, literature has explored the uses of ICTs in divergent sectors such as knowledge and service work (Ticona 2015) or specific digital strategies within a particular occupation (O’Meara 2019). Particularly useful is Ticona's finding that service workers tend to use ICT as an everyday form of resistance (e.g., taking unapproved smartphone breaks). However, the workers in this study are engaging beyond individual acts of resistance through the blacklist and therefore speak to the role of social media in shaping industry-wide practices. In addition, there is also a rich literature on the use of ICTs among gig workers (Maffie 2020; Wood and Lehdonvirta 2021; Wood, Lehdonvirta and Graham 2018). However, unlike gig workers who must use ICTs as part of the labor process, the Chinese restaurant workers in this study do not face this constraint and therefore require a different framework of analysis.
In examining the effect of social media on activism, scholars have taken diverging analytical approaches. González-Bailón (2013) argues the ways that social media is used for bottom-up political activism have not differed from offline activism except that more people can be reached more quickly. More recent scholarship concentrates on developing a fine-grained analysis of the various uses of social media in organizing, breaking out the uses and investigating the disadvantages/advantages of each one. Some scholars argue that the effectiveness of social media in activism depends on users and their perceptions of social media. For example, Hennebert et al. (2021, 195) apply the “affordance approach,” meaning that “similar tools may be used in different ways according to users’ intentions and activities” (Hennebert et al. 2021, 195). Similarly, Lazar, Ribak, and Davidson (2020) state “[T]he cave is a sleeping place for the tired and a hiding place for the fugitive” (449). However, in contrast to González-Bailón, Lazar et al. point to the unique capacities of social media in activism and organizing; its visibility and portability. These capacities include “visibility–users’ ability to present their behaviors, knowledge, preferences and networks as well as to observe those of other users; persistence, the users’ ability to retrieve information over time; editability, the users’ ability to design, change and target content, and association—the users’ ability to connect with individuals, texts, and ideas.” Portability also includes four forms: the users’ ability to carry mobile devices in different places, at different times, and in various contexts; availability—the users’ ability to set different modes and levels of accessibility to others, in various contexts; locatability—the users’ ability to trace their own, and others’, locations and routes; and multimediality—the users’ ability to combine voice, text and visual information in one device Lazar, Ribak, and Davidson (2020, 439).
While this portability-visibility framing aptly spotlights the objective dimensions that could unleash the potential of social media in political activism, the subjective dimensions of the medium that could potentially limit its capacity have been understudied. In the context of this study, the objective dimensions of social media allowed the blacklist of Chinese and Asian restaurants in the industry to grow rapidly in popularity among Chinese restaurant workers but the subjective dimensions of social media, such as user mistrust and disinformation severely negated the blacklist to develop into a collective force that is necessary for systemic change in the industry.
Methodology
This article employs digital ethnography, in which researchers immerse themselves in the digital platforms that are studied, becoming active participants in various platforms including social networking websites, mobile applications, and other channels to tell social stories (Coover 2004; Couldry and Mccarthy 2004; Dicks et al. 2005; Jenkins 2006; Jones 1998; Pink 2007). As an extension of the ethnographic method in anthropological and sociological research, digital ethnography also attends to people's sayings and doings that speak to larger social patterns. Specifically, I traced the development and the stories of an online blacklist of 600 estimated Chinese/Asian fusion restaurants across the country. This list was created on a public WeChat account called “Unscrupulous Shops” (黑店) where stories of wage theft, false promises, unreasonable demands, and mistreatment from employers were shared. All the stories were in Chinese except for business addresses. The stories chosen for this article were translated by a hired native Chinese speaker.
In addition to analyzing the development of the blacklist, I also supplemented findings with data from my broader 16-month ethnographic project on Chinese workers in the industry. Specifically, some of the stories shared on the Unscrupulous Shops account were compared with my own in-person experiences to find similarities and discrepancies.
Lastly, I also conducted a digital analysis of the WeChat platform, a Chinese social media application used by almost all Chinese restaurant workers whom I have met throughout my broader research project. I focus on the unique communicative characteristics of WeChat that facilitated the virality of the blacklist. For the purpose of this study, I became one of the 5000 friends of the blacklist account and gained full access to all the postings. One of the restaurant workers granted me the referral required to become a friend of the account. With full access to the account, I documented postings relevant to the management and administration of the account since its inception in September 2015 until its demise in June 2017. Many of the postings were initiated by the administrators or interactions where they responded to questions that address the integrity of the account.
The WeChat Platform: The First Super-App
A brief analysis of the platform WeChat is necessary to appreciate the degree to which it enabled the establishment and the proliferation of the blacklist. WeChat is a privately owned Chinese mobile application launched in 2011 in China that became the all-in-one social media platform for most Chinese citizens and recent Chinese migrants. With over a billion users worldwide, it is second to Facebook as per the number of users. It facilitates instant messaging, enables voice text, and allows pictures and videos to be shared via the smartphone. Additionally, it transmits real-time voice intercom, and enables video calls and group chats. Like most other social media platforms, users can register with the application and create a profile and share pictures, videos and daily updates of their “moments” or other content such as comments and retweets with their social network (“friends”). WeChat is also one of the first companies to provide e-wallet services on smartphones, a feature that revolutionized, the e-commerce industry. According to The Economist (2016), one-third of its users make regular e-commerce purchases through the application and over half of its users have linked their bankcards to the app.
During my 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in at least six Chinese/Asian fusion restaurants, I witnessed Chinese workers spending considerable time during the day on their smartphones, either playing video games or chatting on WeChat. According to WeChat's own report, more than 90% of its users use the application every day, half of whom use it more for than one hour daily. While WeChat is multifunctional and expansive, it is a communication medium at its core. Group chats and messaging services are vital social outlets for many young Chinese restaurant workers living and working outside of New York City. They rely on WeChat to stay connected with their family and friends. Many chat groups become especially active between 10 pm to 2 or 3 am the next day because that is when many workers get to relax after a full day's work in the restaurant. Most importantly, WeChat has become a platform for workers to share stories about work and life with their online community. As Fernandes (2017) suggests in
The multipurpose of WeChat has made it the first super app and ubiquitous within the Chinese-speaking community. It is within this context that two exrestaurant workers who are nicknamed Elder Brother and Little Brother by their online friends, started the blacklist by collecting and sharing stories of worker discontent through an individual public account. The two worker administrators chose to use an individual public account rather than a group chat because group chats cap the maximum number of users at 500, whereas an individual account can have up to 5000 “friends,” thus making the blacklist accessible to more users. Further, in addition to the 5000 friends who have full viewing access to the stories or digital posts/videos that run for a short duration, an unlimited number of “followers” can view the ten most recent postings on the app.
The unique feature of becoming friends with the blacklist account enabled the blacklist of Chinese and Asian restaurants in the United States to grow and become viral among Chinese restaurant workers. Specifically, to become a friend with an account, one must be referred by an existing friend of the account. This snowballing method of network building usually conditions the slow growth of any WeChat account. However, as we will see in the next section, the close-knit network also elicited trust and the quick corroboration of stories of poor working conditions that have festered in the industry enabled the blacklist to go viral.
The Birth and Demise of the Blacklist
Birth of the Blacklist
On September 6, 2015, the blacklist posted its first series of stories by restaurant workers documenting their experiences in Chinese/Asian fusion restaurants across the United States. The first post comes from a sushi restaurant in Somerdale, New Jersey in the form of a poster-like picture with two columns where the left column is split into vertical halves. The top left section provides a short narrative of what the restaurant owners did to be listed on the blacklist; at the bottom right is a picture of the restaurant, and the right column shows a picture of the restaurant's menu with identifying information. The narrative reads: This is a family-owned restaurant. It has one kitchen chef and one sushi chef. Sushi chef is responsible for cleaning the bathroom and sushi bar area. The boss would deduct/steal tips from the sushi bar. The owner couple hired two Chinese as part-time waiters. They constantly berate workers. Food is extremely bad, as they often feed workers with leftover food. Six workers would only get a bowl of bean sprout to go with rice. The owners would comfort workers with good words when they think of quitting, but fire them the next day. Worker turn-over is high. This is a waste of worker's employment agency fee.
A typical posting on the blacklist (2015).
The female boss is Cantonese. She monitors the sushi bar every day, yammering all the time. The dorm provided is slum-like. They promised that work ends around 10:30pm at the beginning of the week, but we often don’t start leaving till after 10:40pm. By the end of the week, we don’t leave till midnight. When I called them from the agency, they sound amiable. Once you start to work, you know you’ve been fucking conned. Two hibachi chef dogs (one of them is the owner's brother) intentionally give us food that is suitable for pigs. Waiters usually need to order food and the boss doesn’t even give employees a discount. The Hibachi chef is the brother of the female boss, the other hibachi chef is always flattering the boss's brother and gossips a lot. Workers even need to split the WiFi bill at the provided apartment. The boss doesn’t even pay for the internet fee even though her relatives also live there. The boss doesn’t allow us to cook food at the restaurant. She expects us to share our own food with everyone in the restaurant and only gives us food that is about to go bad. The boss steals tips and blames it on the waiters or the head sushi chef. She's constantly monitoring the sushi bar, afraid the chefs would steal food to eat. She treats every worker as a thief and is always on guard. This restaurant has a very bad reputation in Chinatown (NYC). Brothers and sisters, avoid this restaurant at all costs.
The story provides a list of mistreatments and violations of the restaurant. He complains about the conditions in the dormitory/apartment provided, affirming the norm that a sanitary living arrangement is fundamental to worker subsistence. Employer-provided housing is somewhat unique in the North American context with the major exception being seasonal agricultural work. While this practice is valued by workers, broader consequences have been highlighted by critical scholars (Wu 2024; Ngai and Smith, 2007). Then the boss fails to provide decent meals to workers, another expected norm in this work arrangement. The worker is also unhappy with how the boss micromanages the staff, constantly monitoring their movements. Most importantly, the worker expresses frustration with the various forms of wage theft that often go unnoticed in the industry. First, the worker claims that the boss steals tips and blames it on other workers to create division. This is concerning given that a waiter's salary is largely dependent on gratuity. Second, the worker is frustrated with having to work overtime without pay.
Another post comes from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 10, 2015: There are already reports circulating about this restaurant. So please be aware, don’t work for Saga in Pittsburgh, Penn. They tell you over the phone that the salary is $3,700 to $4,000 [per month], and the tips are all 18%. When you go there at the end of the week, it's only a bit over $50 per day. Young customers don’t tip (打铁) there. You also must share the tips with the hibachi chefs. We drove to this restaurant on our own and the round trip took 12 hours. The restaurant is just looking for substitute workers, as they don’t have enough people working over the weekend. Then the owner just found some random reasons to fire us, without compensating for gas or travel money. The boss will turn his phone off if you call him. It's really unscrupulous. The workers at the restaurant all said the boss is excessively unreasonable (太过分) at my first day of work. They said there was one time when all the workers resigned and the restaurant had to close for a couple of days. Please be aware of this unscrupulous chain store. (a post from 2015)
In a quite rare move, the administrators decided to also post some of the comments from other readers along with the original posts. As mentioned before, members/friends of the account do not get to read comments unless the comments come from someone who is already in your friend list on WeChat. To circumvent this limitation on visibility, the administrators created the main post using screenshots of the comments including the original post and readers’ comments:
Saga is really an unscrupulous store. (I’ve) worked at two Sagas. The first day I only got around $20 to $30 in tips. The living environment is terrible; it's dirty and messy. The waiters (奇台) there are also hard to deal with. I hope they will be investigated soon. Shut them all down. Go to jail for the rest of their life. I heard from my friend that the one in MA is also quite trashy. Please be aware. Agreed! It cannot be more unscrupulous. You not only cannot make money there, but also get so tired. The dorm is like a doghouse. The one in South Village is ok, except that it has bed bugs and bad work assignments (a post from 2015).
The comments show that at least several workers who are also members/friends of the blacklist account have worked in this restaurant or in one of their chain stores. The comments not only reaffirm the original claim that the employer provides misleading information on how much money could be expected through tips, but they also reveal that the dormitory condition is unsanitary and are infested with bedbugs. During my ethnographic work, I also experienced similar sanitary issues, including moldy bedroom ceilings, bedbugs, and unsanitary toilets. More importantly, the fact that a restaurant can be identified by several workers as unscrupulous makes the blacklist relevant in at least two ways. First, stories in a close-knit social network such as this blacklist can be quickly corroborated by other readers, thereby validating workers’ grievances. In this way, the platform helps workers who believe they have been wronged feel less isolated and hopeless about their situation. Second, each corroboration of a story generates momentum and support for the blacklist. It becomes a cumulative process in which workers can build empathy and solidarity.
More importantly, the blacklist has exemplified what should be considered as resistance under Katz’ (2004) resistance-resilience-reworking topology. By openly shaming unscrupulous employers for poor working conditions, lies, and mistreatment, the employer–employee power relation is being reconfigured as workers feel empowered to finally have a voice and a channel to address the exploitative practices within the industry. However, as subsequent data will show, the nature of social media can quickly break down this form of resistance into practices that are less confrontational and more aligned with strategies of reworking.
The Blacklist Goes Viral
Over the next few months in 2015, hundreds of stories, many of them with photographs, appeared on the blacklist repeating similar themes: wage theft, unsanitary housing, atrocious food, and misleading work arrangements with employers. In the past, these stories of abuse were confined to coworkers or a worker's immediate social circle. In some rare instances, news of an egregiously bad employer makes it to the headlines of a major online outlet, but these stories were rare. The blacklist therefore, became an immediate and accessible platform for many Chinese restaurant workers to voice their discontent about working conditions.
In the first direct message to their social network, the administrators that run this account sends out a notice declaring; “Distribute the WeChat blacklist to your friends. Let us minimize our work in unscrupulous shops and minimize the number of people being cheated. If you know of any, send them to me, including location, name, and the reason to be on this list. Let's scrutinize the nature of their (boss's) evilness.” Emboldened by the blacklist's initial synergy and momentum, the administrators sent a strong message to fellow workers that they want to fundamentally change the conditions of the industry. The message not only reveals clear class consciousness from the administrators, but it also reveals the significance of moral values and norms in cultivating this consciousness. The fact that the administrators highlighted the “evilness” of employers to distinguish themselves reaffirms the notion that worker–employer relations are mediated through a set of moral standards and appeals.
Tapping into the need for workers to hear about each other's work experiences, the blacklist went viral. Nine months into the launch of the blacklist, the administrators revealed that the account had reached its maximum capacity of 5,000 friends. This means that 5,000 mostly Chinese restaurant workers were now following the list of “bad” employers across the country. A few months later, we learn in another admin post that another 20,000 people have become “followers” of the account—a category that allows users to read the ten newest posts of the blacklist account.
The rapid popularity growth of the blacklist is astonishing given the nature of communication on WeChat. Unlike Facebook and Twitter where individual profiles can be made public, which increases the chance of immediate virality, the blacklist account membership requires an invitation from one of its existing friends. While this “word-of-mouth” way of membership makes individual WeChat accounts much more difficult to access, the online networks that are formed are more close-knit and trustworthy than those on Facebook and Twitter. At the least, attracting five thousand members from across the country in less than 9 months suggests that the blacklist is filling a void in addressing worker grievances. In this way, the blacklist represents a first step of resistance by developing what Katz (2004) considers the critical consciousness to confront and redress historically specific conditions of exploitation in the industry.
Bosses Take Notice
The astronomical growth of the blacklist, however, also drew the ire of employers. According to several posts from the administrators, we come to know that bosses have infiltrated the backlist and have been actively disputing some of the stories on private messaging threads. This gets flagged on the main account which is communicated by the administrators. One such post reads, “Bosses, if you feel like your shop was misrepresented, please message me privately including the date posted. There may be stores that were misrepresented.” Another post reads, “A lot of bosses believe we are biased, that we do not report bad workers.” While it was never revealed who were the bosses and what they were disputing, we learned that the list made some of the bosses angry and frustrated and some of them were even threatening the administrators. The Elder Brother (a post from 2015) writes, “I’m busy, so I don’t have time to deal with this account. But folks in the US are afraid to take over because some bosses are seeking out the manager of this account. I’m in China so I’m not afraid of them”. These posts revealed that the administrators have been running the account from mainland China and that they would prefer to transfer the administration duties to workers in the United States. A brief interview with Elder brother revealed that he had worked in the United States for some years until a quarrel with an ex-boss that led to him being reported for undocumented status and eventual deportation. This experience has fueled his interest in creating and maintain the blacklist despite threatening messages from employers.
Distrust on Social Media Leads to a Change in Attitude
Facing persistent complaints from employers challenging the validity of the stories, the tone and messaging from the administrators begin to take a shift. In direct communication with bosses, the administrators decided that they need to establish the moral high ground to maintain the credibility of the blacklist. The administrators assumed a “neutral” stance by serving as the wise mediator between workers and employers. One post read, “We have deleted a lot of posts, many of them are from workers who were acting on their anger. We wish bosses could communicate better with the workers. We are all trying to survive. If it doesn’t belong to you, don’t take from workers. If it belongs to the workers, don’t try to cheat them. If you’re paid for the work, you should do your job. No one's job is easy” (a post from 2015). Another post reads “We received news that ICE is starting to arrest people, please take caution. You all probably have seen the news before me. Same advice, more communication between workers and bosses and less detriment to both. The wrongdoing of bosses will provoke discontent among workers. Both parties will be harmed at the end” (a post from 2015).
The two posts indicate a clear shift in attitude of the administrators. They illustrate that the administrators now recognize the growing significance of the blacklist and the pressing need to struggle for the moral high ground. The administrators’ reasoning for the shift in stance is that the blacklist needs to be authentic and win public perception for it to be an effective tool. Their appeal for workers and bosses to fulfill their roles and establish better communication suggests that the purpose of the blacklist is to cultivate harmony between workers and employers and ensure the smooth functioning of the businesses. The account becomes distant from its initial labor rights sensitive voice. In other words, the administrators want to emphasize the fact that their aim is not to disrupt the industry, a strategy that may be seen as unreasonable and extreme by readers of the blacklist. Instead, they must be seen as open-minded and objective to gain credibility. As such, the blacklist must now straddle between an exclusive forum for workers to voice their frustrations and an impartial platform that mediates work-related conflicts to build credibility and legitimacy. This shift thus represents the beginning of the reworking process under Katz's (2004) topology as the administrators are no longer seeking to disrupt the industry but rather find practical ways to appease both sides.
Fake Accounts and Fake News
In addition to the employers complaining privately to the administrators, there have also been reports in various restaurant group chats where employers pretending to be workers complain about the validity of the stories on the blacklist. In one such post, a member posted several comments to a shop reported as unscrupulous, “What the fuck is the point of this blacklist? It is so one-sided, is there any meaning to this? Learn from 美國58 (another news platform) and bring us real benefits. Fuck, how is it possible that claims from one side can determine a shop is unscrupulous? This is unreasonable. Is there meaning to this? This is all too weird.” The WeChat account of the member was later exposed as an owner of a restaurant on the blacklist, leading to a sarcastic response from another commentator: “Thanks for your profound comments, boss-man!”
The revelation of this fake account was not necessarily helpful for either the workers or the blacklist. The possibility of something fake being associated with the blacklist created a rippling effect in unintentional ways. Suspicion and skepticism began to simmer, and the veracity of the online content became a focal point. Instead of seeking ways to organize workers, the administrators felt compelled to focus on policing the stories and determining the accuracy behind each story. Facing mounting resistance from bosses and the general skepticism of online content, the administrators’ shifting attitudes created dissonance among workers. Some workers began to openly question the validity of stories. In an open letter to the blacklist, one worker writes, “Having read through the entire blacklist it is visible that some of the restaurants are not unscrupulous. Rather, they look like they’re from vengeful workers or customers. Why are they listed? This is irresponsible conduct. With so many users, and many more in the future, have you thought through the negative repercussions? I wish that blacklist and the admins can provide a set of standards and rules to evaluate whether the shop deserves to be on the blacklist or not, and not blindly accept posts. This will turn into vengeful behavior. In the long run, it will lose credibility. I also wish that subscribers would participate in the evaluation and supervise the administrators.”
The post captures the general sentiment among workers who wanted to standardize the criterion for the blacklist. More importantly, the posts also reveal that workers are questioning the “objectivity” and modesty of the administrators – the most important elements that enabled the growth of the blacklist. While we do not know whether this post came from another fake worker account, it nevertheless had an immediate impact on the administrators. In response to the request to standardize which practices should be considered unscrupulous acts, the administrators outlined specific guidelines for evaluation:
Finding excuses to deduct pay, or to delay wage payment (for example, broken dishes or serving wrong dishes). To abandon workers who quit or were fired on the highway or a remote station. (For example, the administrator of the blacklist was abandoned by an unethical boss at a remote place and only got back home after reporting to the police. Restaurant demands are reasonable (for example, some restaurants have rules stricter than military camps and jails). Poor accommodation (although this might be due to higher numbers of workers, but there are some that are worse than slums, no AC in the summer, no heat in the winter). Bosses dehumanize workers, openly cursing at workers (everyone's life is difficult. Bosses take huge investment risks, but everyone started out as a worker, so we should have mutual respect).
The recommendations formalized the required information for future reports and explicitly defined practices including wage theft, abusive and dehumanizing practices, and decent living arrangements that would be considered to determine a store unscrupulous. The administrators also requested that future reports must include the reason for the report, location, contact information, and most importantly, evidence supporting the report. The burden of proof is now on workers to show how they were mistreated or deceived. But how would one go about providing proof that the boss stole tips when some transactions are paid in cash? Or how should one provide proof in situations where work conditions are drastically different from what the boss had originally verbally promised? In effect, workers are left with the impossible predicament of providing evidence for mistreatment.
Siding With Bosses and Chastising Workers
As an addition to the ongoing social network presence, the administrators of the account also wanted to establish a system of certification for restaurants and workers that aimed at creating quality matches for employers. The verification process would involve each party providing truthful information. A representative from the blacklist platform would contact each party to verify all the information. The owners in the transaction must meet these three conditions:
For any reason that you’d like to fire a worker, you must pay for his/her one-way ticket. If there is any request different from normal practices of the industry, please inform the workers in advance so that they can have a choice. Please pay wages on time and ensure the worker returns home safely.
As for the workers, they must upload a “bio” outlining their work experiences.
Workers can choose to keep the bio private or make it visible to certified restaurants when and if they choose to do so. More importantly, workers were encouraged to always impart the truth, given that information disclosed would be investigated and because if not, “every time you lie, it could turn a good boss into a bad one.” Workers were then chastised for leaving the job on Friday and Saturday nights when the restaurant is busiest, a practice that could significantly affect profit margins, especially for smaller shops that rely on the weekends to keep their business afloat. The account users were also notified that the blacklist will begin reporting “bad” workers so that bosses do not feel bias towards them.
Individualizing Claims and the Problem of a “Few Bad Apples”
Most importantly, in addition to vetting workers’ profiles, the administrators also reassured bosses that they are self-policing the content of the blacklist and that many stories have been excluded because they seemed petty. “We have upheld fair and equal principles. We receive many reports daily. We didn’t allow all of them to be posted, and we also don’t list all that were sent to us. It is because we consider many reported stores to be so-called “petty cheats” (切糕) and therefore cannot be defined as unscrupulous restaurants.” To operationalize the self-policing of stories, stories were individualized. Bosses were encouraged to defend/justify their actions case by case. The administrators write, “These are the shops that we reported, and we also hope to provide an opportunity for bosses that were reported to explain themselves. If the report matches 70% of your actions, we hope you promise to correct them. By doing so, we promise to take you off the list.” Workers were then told to self-police their own stories and reminded that each story would be investigated. Recently, a lot of people asked me why I stopped posting unscrupulous merchants. I did receive a lot of tips on merchants, but those merchants are not that unscrupulous. Can you accuse a merchant unscrupulous just because the restaurant is busy? Can you accuse a merchant unscrupulous just because two employees share a bedroom? Can you accuse a merchant unscrupulous just because there is too much work? People reported around 20 to 30 such merchants. Should we make them all public? If that is the case, which merchants are not unscrupulous? Don’t just report any restaurant, unless you are ignorant enough to believe the blacklist has become your tool of revenge when you get fired. We will investigate each incident!
Lastly, the administrators appealed to workers that the issues facing the industry is not widespread and that the problem lies with “a few bad apples.” They write “it is noted that there are tens of thousands of restaurants, and we only reported about three hundred. It shows that the bad restaurants represent a small percentage, and it also reveals that many bosses are good.”
The Demise of the Blacklist
The administrators have now gone full circle from evaluating the evilness of bosses to openly questioning workers’ stories and even chastising their pettiness. The drive for standardization of the platform created an irreversible discord between workers and the administrators. In the months following the attempt to standardize, there was a noticeable decrease in the number of unscrupulous shops reported on the blacklist. Whereas the blacklist was reporting 5–10 shops on a weekly basis prior to standardization, now weeks would go by without a single report. Instead, random articles on bad shopping experiences, petty consumer scams, and even “bad” workers were reported. The reason, however, does not seem to be because there are fewer unscrupulous activities in the industry, but rather, the administrators have become much stricter in filtering which shops to report. The standards set by the administrators were so narrow, coupled with the impossible task of providing sufficient evidence, the blacklist became defunct by 2018.
Conclusion
Engagement with social media by the younger generation of Chinese workers has created new spaces to address labor conflicts in the industry. This is largely facilitated by the Chinese social media platform WeChat, a multipurpose mobile application used by over one billion Chinese citizens and Chinese migrants. By focusing on its communicative attributes and referral-dependent groups, the application has cultivated small but trusted online communities for information sharing and storytelling. This is most evident in the formation and development of a blacklist of Chinese/Asian fusion restaurants in the United States where restaurant workers share stories of wage theft, dilapidated housing, and other mistreatments by employers. The rapid growth in popularity of the blacklist, which attracted over 25,000 members and followers within 18 months, became the focus of the industry and a space for workers to seek redress for unfavorable work conditions. By blacklisting unscrupulous restaurants, it names and shames employers and makes it difficult for these employers to find workers in an industry that is already short on labor. Subsequently, some employers of blacklisted restaurants explicitly and covertly resisted by challenging the credibility of the backlist. In the struggle to maintain credibility and influence, the administrators of the blacklist were compelled to standardize unscrupulous activities and institutionalize a verification system of “good” restaurants and workers. In so doing, they individualized stories by treating them on a case-by-case basis and encouraged a culture of self-policing among workers. The administrators also appealed to workers that most bosses are good leading to the belief that the conditions of the industry can change by addressing the “few bad apples.” These actions, however, created discord and disillusion among workers, thereby leading to the demise of the blacklist.
The findings in this study provide important insights into the use of social media in labor politics. Whereas much of existing scholarship has focused on the instrumental use of digital technologies by organized labor, this case study of the blacklist illustrates that unorganized workers find spontaneous uses of social media to address their labor discontent. Social media has empowered workers to tell stories about their lives, build (online) communities, and seek redress for what they feel are unfair working conditions. By sharing stories with each other on social media, workers effectively evoke what they view as decent human values and morals to shame employers and temporarily alter how the Chinese/Asian fusion restaurant industry operates. The invoking of morals and values to change employer behavior becomes crucial in an industry in which labor law enforcement is weak and many labor violations go unreported. Consequently, the relationship between workers and employers in this industry is defined by social norms and values rather than labor laws and workplace regulations. Most importantly, social media enabled these norms and values to become public and therefore subject to scrutiny and contestation.
Conceptually, this case study illustrates that Kat's (2004) resistance-resilience-reworking topology should not be viewed as static and discrete but rather as fluid and amorphous. The portability and visibility of social media enabled workers to openly resist through the online shaming of employers and begin to address labor exploitation issues that have been festering in the industry. However, the distrust and disinformation inherent to social media quickly compelled the administrators to rework the blacklist into something less confrontational. It shows that social media encourages cavalier consumption of information and stories leading to frequent reactionary responses. The shifting responses make it impossible to place workers’ actions into a single discrete categorization of labor agency.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
ORCID iD
