Hong Kong restaurant chain allows employees to fly to New York, pick up families for free

A Hong Kong restaurant group, Zhou Ming, has set up a bizarre scheme that allows its employees to fly to a Hong Kong airport and pick up their families in New York. The Humanitarian for Life (HAL) program allows all 250 employees to pick up their relatives for free, plus a $650K spending spree at a restaurant and five-star hotel. RELATED: ‘You’re never too busy for fatherhood’: Shenzhen elevator salesman, 22,has twins with wife, 19 Last month, the Hong Kong government went so far as to call it “awful, unethical and manipulative.” Some New York Times readers have lambasted the program on Twitter. “You would have to be crazy as hell to do that” , they wrote. Meanwhile, a Malaysian human resources company has come to the defense of its employees, who are not allowed to pick up their families. It’s part of a scheme that takes more than 5,000 migrant workers to visit their families in Kuala Lumpur, which “helps to strengthen their families’ emotional bonds” with them. RELATED: America’s workplace problem: The struggle to make ends meet “It strengthens their family relations,” Shan Shan Bhate, the firm’s executive director, said. “As a result they become committed workers and their willingness to deliver on their work continues to grow.”