This article just came up in my feed. I know this is a one-sided article, but one can imagine how stressful it might be for the allegedly abused persons to take these actions. If it’s true, I hope the owners get what they deserve, sooner than later.
so, we never come to know the name of the restaurant?
I have a lot of experience with these things. This happens to Nepalese kitchen staff all over Europe. And sometimes, they indeed manage to file a police report. However, these lawsuits usually ‘fall through the cracks’ because the restaurant owner will push for their deportation over everything else. Once they are deported, the case in Luxembourg (or whatever EU country) is also closed.
In many southern or eastern EU countries, focusing on deportation is also in the country’s /police interest since it saves them a lot of time and resources and in the end, most of these workers would leave the country the minute they are paid their back-wages. meaning the money will not stay in the local economy. whereas the restaurant owner himself will remain in that country for many more years if he is not made to close up… so from a macro-economic PoV it makes more sense to just deport the worker and give the restaurant owner a slap on the wrist.
As a matter of fact, even for local lawyers it is usually not in their long-term professional interests to defend such workers, for exactly the same reason… as a lawyer you are looking at defending someone who stands to take €10k with him on the next plane out of the airport. So you’ll earn maybe 10% on a case-win basis (the worker has no cash to actually pay you prior to being paid himself). but as a lawyer, your reputation is ruined among all other restaurant owners, who are not going to be leaving the country any time soon…. it could even reach a point where Nepalese restaurants in the country refuse to take your orders and “the community” begins to treat you with hostility. you are left behind in Luxembourg to deal with this “reputational issue” for the rest of your life, while the worker you defended is now wealthy back home and forgets about you over time.
So you basically sacrifice a lifetime of restaurant bosses coming to you for legal services, for one one-off €1000 case with a client who will exit the country the next day… even from lawyer’s PoV it is a difficult sell to defend these workers. that’s why they usually end up being defended by “rights groups” or other types of NGOs or organizations instead…
I hope this particular case will end differently since there is media attention on it but in general that’s how these things go…. the guy who files the police report just gets deported for violating X, Y or Z immigration law (99% of them are unknowingly in violation of some or another immigration law by themselves–**sometimes setup** by the restaurant owner in this way because they know this is how they can end any eventual lawsuit)
> Luxembourg is Europe’s smallest country, and has the world’s highest GDP per capita.
Not sure how accurate the rest of the info from the article is… I’m not saying it’s all lies! But if they mess up such simple data, I don’t know if we can trust everything else
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This article just came up in my feed. I know this is a one-sided article, but one can imagine how stressful it might be for the allegedly abused persons to take these actions. If it’s true, I hope the owners get what they deserve, sooner than later.
so, we never come to know the name of the restaurant?
I have a lot of experience with these things. This happens to Nepalese kitchen staff all over Europe. And sometimes, they indeed manage to file a police report. However, these lawsuits usually ‘fall through the cracks’ because the restaurant owner will push for their deportation over everything else. Once they are deported, the case in Luxembourg (or whatever EU country) is also closed.
In many southern or eastern EU countries, focusing on deportation is also in the country’s /police interest since it saves them a lot of time and resources and in the end, most of these workers would leave the country the minute they are paid their back-wages. meaning the money will not stay in the local economy. whereas the restaurant owner himself will remain in that country for many more years if he is not made to close up… so from a macro-economic PoV it makes more sense to just deport the worker and give the restaurant owner a slap on the wrist.
As a matter of fact, even for local lawyers it is usually not in their long-term professional interests to defend such workers, for exactly the same reason… as a lawyer you are looking at defending someone who stands to take €10k with him on the next plane out of the airport. So you’ll earn maybe 10% on a case-win basis (the worker has no cash to actually pay you prior to being paid himself). but as a lawyer, your reputation is ruined among all other restaurant owners, who are not going to be leaving the country any time soon…. it could even reach a point where Nepalese restaurants in the country refuse to take your orders and “the community” begins to treat you with hostility. you are left behind in Luxembourg to deal with this “reputational issue” for the rest of your life, while the worker you defended is now wealthy back home and forgets about you over time.
So you basically sacrifice a lifetime of restaurant bosses coming to you for legal services, for one one-off €1000 case with a client who will exit the country the next day… even from lawyer’s PoV it is a difficult sell to defend these workers. that’s why they usually end up being defended by “rights groups” or other types of NGOs or organizations instead…
I hope this particular case will end differently since there is media attention on it but in general that’s how these things go…. the guy who files the police report just gets deported for violating X, Y or Z immigration law (99% of them are unknowingly in violation of some or another immigration law by themselves–**sometimes setup** by the restaurant owner in this way because they know this is how they can end any eventual lawsuit)
> Luxembourg is Europe’s smallest country, and has the world’s highest GDP per capita.
Not sure how accurate the rest of the info from the article is… I’m not saying it’s all lies! But if they mess up such simple data, I don’t know if we can trust everything else