The Great Nail Reckoning continues: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly set to announce Monday that nail salons who illegally denied their workers overtime or paid them less than the minimum wage have been ordered to pay out a total of $2 million.
Your favorite Parks and Recreation angel Rashida Jones is executive-producing a TNT series called Claws that’s based in a nail salon and all about “female badness.”
Last year’s bombshell New York Times investigation on labor conditions in nail salons won both praise and criticism, the latter mostly from salon owners, who claimed the story greatly exaggerated how poorly paid many workers are. The evidence continues to show the Times series did indeed find serious flaws in the…
In May of this year, New York Times reporter Sarah Maslin Nir published a deep-dive investigation into exploitation, unfair labor practices and health hazards at New York City nail salons. Since the series was published, nail technicians tell the Columbia Journalism Review, life is changing gradually but definitely…
Last summer, a Queens assemblyman helped prepare a bill to fight the terrible working conditions in New York City’s nail salons, then he suddenly changed his mind. What happened? Money, is one guess. Seems like money happened.
At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, October 6, a large crowd of nail salon owners and workers gathered outside the Manhattan offices of the New York Times. They came demanding apology and retribution for a two-part exposé by Sarah Maslin Nir, which, they say, has caused “grievous harm to our reputations and to our small shops.”
Since the Vietnam War, the nail salon has been the backbone of Vietnamese life in America. There are over 200,000 nail salons in the United States, most of which are owned and operated by Vietnamese refugees, immigrants, and the families they’ve built. Nearly every “successful” Vietnamese-American doctor, lawyer,…
While Gov. Cuomo has brought about significant changes in New York following the New York Times “Unvarnished” series on nail salon worker exploitation, including a push for new legislation, an inspection task force, and a public education campaign requiring salons to post a “manicurist’s bill of rights,” nail salons…
The New York Times has issued a rebuttal to former Times journalist and current spa owner Richard Bernstein, who wrote in the New York Review of Books that nail salons can’t possibly be as bad as the NYT suggested in their series “Unvarnished.” The Times says they are standing by the series and that Bernstein is…
The New York Review of Books ran a rebuttal this weekend to the much-talked about New York Times series “Unvarnished,” Sarah Maslin Nir’s yearlong investigation into the horrendous labor practices at many New York nail salons. The rebuttal, written by former reporter and current nail salon owner Richard Bernstein,…
The New York Times exposé series about labor conditions in New York nail salons continues to produce swift state action: Governor Cuomo ordered emergency measures for the investigation and regulation of salons in the state, there’s been an active local campaign to partner with community groups and city agencies on…
On Thursday, a group of New York City agencies and volunteers are mobilizing to educate nail salon workers, owners and patrons about the rights being denied to industry workers, the legal avenues to enforce these rights, and the actions available to consumers who are interested in reducing the rampant,…
The recent New York Times nail salon exposé and subsequent, appropriate government reaction has come accompanied by a lot of entry-level and highly limiting personal quibbling from manicure-loving women, who are here to remind us of the power of the internet’s dominant heuristic—which is to read something that does…
Despite the floundering economy, nail salons are going forth and prospering all across the UK. In the past year, the number of new manicure outlets has increased by 20 percent. Some in the beauty industry have cheerfully — and naively — chalked this up to the makeup being "recession proof." In reality, though,…
Not shockingly, the recession has gotten in the way of some women's regular manicures. Good news for us nail-biters and Sally Hansen, less so for salon owners, many of whom are in trouble. [NYT]
