They can usually be seen pedaling madly on Manhattan streets, often against traffic, rushing to satisfy New Yorkers’ capacious appetites for cold sesame noodles and General Tso’s chicken.

But nowadays these restaurant deliverymen can increasingly be seen standing defiantly on the city’s sidewalks, hoisting protest signs and shouting that they should be paid the minimum wage.

Call it the deliverymen’s rebellion. These workers, almost all of them immigrants from China, have picketed several Saigon Grill, Ollie’s and Our Place outlets, accusing these well-known Asian restaurants of paying them as little as $1.40 an hour, far less than the federal and state minimum wage. The workers have filed federal wage lawsuits in Manhattan against those restaurant companies, and their advocates say they will soon sue a dozen other restaurants in the city.

“The conditions are pretty bad in all the restaurants, so there’s no real advantage to switch to another restaurant,” said Yu Guan Ke, a deliveryman who said Saigon Grill usually paid him just $120 in wages for his 75-hour weeks. “Before we would accept whatever wages they would give us, but now we see we should stand up for what we’re entitled to under the law.”