It’s the American dream, but for a group of immigrant workers whose colleagues were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, opening a new restaurant means more than that.

The restaurant will honor the group’s 73 co-workers who died when Windows On the World – a top-floor World Trade Center restaurant – crumbled to ashes.

But it will also stand as a model of justice in an industry that regularly exploits immigrants, said Fekkak Mamdouh, one of more than 30 former Windows workers forming the cooperatively owned Colors eatery in Greenwich Village, which expects to open in September.

“From those ashes, this will not only be a legacy to those who lost their lives, it will show other restaurants how they should be run,” said Mamdouh, who will work with owners from 22 countries in positions ranging from busboys to bartenders.

The group says many immigrants, crammed into the sweaty kitchens and back corridors of restaurants around the nation, receive low wages in return for long hours with few breaks, and no overtime pay or promotion opportunities.

“In most restaurants we are treated badly; we are given the dirty jobs, and we are making less money,” said Mamdouh, who emigrated from Morocco 17 years ago. “Our workers will be treated with dignity, working in their own business, with good pay and health benefits.”

The U.S. food services industry relies heavily on immigrant workers, with 1.6 million foreign born from an industry total of 7.3 million employees nationwide in 2003, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Thousands head to New York, where the city’s 24,000 food and drink establishments generate $8 billion a year.

Restaurant industry analysts said Colors’ history and employee ownership would likely attract patrons, but its ultimate success depends on a combination of factors including location, food, service and labor costs.

Labor costs equal one-third of U.S. restaurants’ revenues and are often instrumental in determining profitability, according to the National Restaurant Association. Despite the higher wages Colors will pay, the association’s head of research, Hudson Riehle, said employee-owned restaurants were becoming a successful industry trend.

Hard grind

For most immigrant restaurant workers, the reality is bleak. Mexican Miguel de la Cruz said he regularly changed jobs as he faced abuse and wage violations.

Cruz, who is not part of Colors, has been fired several times for asking about unpaid hours. “I asked for my salary a couple of times. I got screamed at and was fired,” he said at a recent New York workshop on immigrants’ working conditions.

Others, like Lansana Canran, an African immigrant from Guinea who attended the same session sponsored by a New York advocacy group, have no time to look for other jobs, scraping by to pay rent and to send some money back home.

Canran, 37, earned $6.50 an hour as a dishwasher, just above the state’s minimum wage, until he began cleaning a restaurant from 2 a.m. every night for $7 an hour.

“Fifty cents more can mean $5 more a shift,” he said, adding the most he has earned in one week since arriving 16 years ago was $300.

A small minority, like Apolinar Salas, fight for change. The 36-year-old Mexican was one of 23 immigrants who recently shared a $164,000 settlement from two top Manhattan restaurants charged with discrimination and wage violations.

Charles Hunt of the New York Restaurant Association trade group said law violations were not pervasive, and that improvements could be made through education, enforcement and immigration reform.

“We do need to weed out the people who are committing these violations,” he said. “We need to better educate employers as to what the laws are.”

Salas and his colleagues eventually won their settlement and better working conditions after enlisting the help of New York-based advocacy group the Restaurant Opportunities Center, which sponsored the immigrant workshop.

Pretty help wanted

The center is helping finance Colors, to open in September when workers will attend a training school, receive health insurance and start at $13 an hour as dishwashers, working eight-hour shifts that include breaks.

A recent report by the center detailed widespread discrimination, abuse, and poor pay in the industry. It found most “back of the house” jobs like dishwashers and busboys went to immigrants while the vast majority of high-paying waiter positions went to whites.