Originally published in the Winter/Spring 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 76, printed March 26. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Christopher Walker

Firing workers because they fight for better pay is illegal. That’s what the National Labor Relations Board told the owner of Mom’s Siam, a Thai food restaurant in Richmond’s Carytown district. (There is a second Mom’s Siam in downtown Richmond that is not linked to this story.)

NLRB Judge Geoffrey Carter, ruling on an Unfair Labor Practice complaint brought by nine Mom’s Siam workers against owner Sukanya Pala-art found that Pala-art and her management team broke the law when she fired the workers for participating in organized efforts to secure better wages and working conditions.

Judge Carter pointed to the owner’s and managerial staff’s retaliation for organizing as a clear violation of federal protections for labor rights. As restitution, Carter ordered that all nine plaintiffs must receive back pay and that eight be offered back their jobs.

The judge deemed that the evidence left too much ambiguity to allow him to rule that Mom’s Siam had not offered one employee his job back after the workers’ rally.

The NLRB is the federal agency charged with enforcing labor laws. It includes in its definition of legally protected labor action – “concerted activity” – actions such as discussing wages and working conditions; joint refusals to work in unsafe conditions; group discussions with one’s boss about wages and benefits; and talking to government agencies or media about these efforts.

In this case, the workers were able to document how the owner punished and fired them for engaging in labor activism that clearly fit within the bounds of “concerted activity.”

The Defender first began covering this story in the summer of 2023, when Pala-art fired the nine employees after they held a rally across the street from the restaurant. After the rally, the workers announced they would be filing the Unfair Labor Practice complaint with the NLRB.

The ULP case outlines how, in response to the workers collectively delivering to Pala-art a list of demands for better working conditions and staging the 2023 protest, Pala-art and her management team told them not to discuss wages together; suggested employees should quit their jobs; closed Mom’s Siam for more than a week to withhold wages from protesting employees; and fired employees.

All of these actions on the part of Pala-art are, thanks to the NLRB’s protections for concerted activity, illegal.

Although the Defender was not able to contact any of the workers who lodged the ULP complaint, this reporter visited the restaurant in late January and asked a staff member if any of the fired employees still worked there.

This person said that some had returned to their jobs – it was unclear if this was before or after the NLRB decision – but that they had gradually “drifted away” from Mom’s Siam.

Christopher Walker is a member of the Defenders Labor Support Committee.