Lawsuit alleges Little India beauty salon chain exploits workers

Ziba Chief Executive Sumita Batra, 39, and her staff have styled models for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone magazines and TV shows "America's Next Top Model" and "Extreme Makeover."

But now Batra and her family partners are accused of building their business by exploiting workers, many of them female immigrants. Former Ziba workers filed a class action lawsuit last week alleging the owners of the 11-store salon chain failed to give them the minimum wage, overtime compensation and meal and rest breaks.

The plaintiffs include Payal Modi of India and Bishnu Shahani from Nepal, who say they were paid as little as $4 an hour at the salon, denied rest breaks and required to deliver hours of free henna tattooing services at parties.

The women, who say they were fired in January for challenging the salon's labor contracts, have since opened their own salon in Culver City.

"A lot of people don't read or speak English. They don't know California law," said Modi, who immigrated to Los Angeles in 2001. "So we have to fight for them."

Batra declined an interview request. But her attorney, Navneet Chugh, denied the allegations. All of the salon's beauty workers receive medical benefits, lunch and rest breaks and legal wages, he said. In 2007, three-fourths of the 60 beauty workers on the payroll earned between $18,000 and $55,000 a year plus tips, he said.

"There is absolutely no merit in the lawsuit against Ziba," Chugh said.

Virginia Keeny, the plaintiffs' attorney with Hadsell, Stormer, Keeny, Richardson & Renick LLP in Pasadena, said she expected to represent 150 to 200 workers in the class action lawsuit but could not say how much compensation her clients would request.

Indians Americans might be considered the most successful Asian minority in the United States, reporting high levels of income, education, professional job status and English-language ability -- even though three-fourths are foreign-born -- according to 2004 U.S. Census data. But complaints of labor exploitation are widespread among Indian and other South Asian immigrants, according to Hamid Khan, executive director of the South Asian Network, a community-based civil rights advocacy group.