Business & Tech

Golden Farm Owner Slashes Employees' Hours

In apparent retaliation for demanding back wages, owner Sonny Kim cut the hours of several employees.

In the latest in an ongoing war between workers and store management, several Golden Farm employees had their hours cut drastically last week, according to the advocacy group New York Communities for Change. 

Of the store's 26 employees, 10 workers—nine of them active participants in the months-long legal battle against the Kensington grocery store's owner, Sonny Kim—had their hours slashed by 12 hours each on Friday, said Kate Barut, a community organizer for NYCC. 

Kim also recently hired four new employees, three of which were brought on as replacements—one to fill the space left by , who died in July from cancer, and another to replace Trinidad's brother, who was allegedly fired after missing two days of work.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

"It was very clearly a retaliation act," Barut said, referring to the prolonged uprising from store employees that so far has included a lawsuit, and, as of Saturday, . "That's a huge paycut for those who work below minimum wage."

The Kensington grocery store—known for its vast selection of inexpensive international food—has for months been locked in a battle between its mostly immigrant stock workers and owner Sonny Kim, who until recently paid some store workers less than $5 an hour for 72 hours of work per week.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

While Kim has since raised the hourly wage, workers are also demanding back wages for the years they spent working for illegally low pay.

NYCC kicked off a boycott of the store on Saturday, Barut said. Unlike a , this one is intended to persist until the workers receive their pay. 

"So far, we've been getting a lot of support and turning a lot of people away from the store," Barut said.

While Golden Farm—located at 329 Church Ave.—is a convenient destination for many residents, Barut encourages shoppers to instead patronize Foodtown on McDonald Avenue or New McDonald Fruit Corner on Chrurch Avenue.

Barut said NYCC is currently working on reaching out to Kensington's considerable Bengali, Russian and Polish populations, which constitute a large part of Golden Farm's customer base.

"The main thing is language accessibility," she said. "I had conversations [on Saturday] with people from 10 different countries." 


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Windsor Terrace-Kensington