Shop Talk
Retailers, consumers and prices
Jimmy John’s franchise fires union workers after sick-day campaign
The owners of 10 Minnesota Jimmy John’s sandwich shops — where a rare unionization vote was narrowly rejected last year – have fired six union organizers.
The terminated workers are members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a formerly high-profile union better known as the Wobblies, and said they were fired after they put up 3,000 posters (shown here) around Minneapolis as part of a campaign to win paid sick days.
Michael Mulligan, president of MikLin Enterprises Inc, which operates the affected Jimmy John’s restaurants, told Reuters that the terminated union workers “crossed well over the line of protected activity” with their latest appeal.
“The posters dishonestly state that Jimmy John’s workers are forced to work while sick and suggest that the health of customers is at risk when eating at our restaurants,” said Mulligan, who characterized the IWW as anti-capitalist, anarchist and socialist.
“These posters are false and misleading at best, and in the view of our company, they are defamatory, disparaging and dishonest,” added Mulligan, who said that his business has operated for a decade and served 6 million sandwiches without getting diners sick.
Most fast-food restaurant workers receive low wages and get little in the way of benefits such as health insurance. Paid sick days are a rarity in the industry, which is known for squeezing out costs in order to offer low-priced fare. One exception is San Francisco, which in 2007 became the first U.S. city to require employers to give workers paid sick leave.
Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a restaurant workers organization, in October released a study showing that nearly 88 percent of workers reported not receiving paid sick days and that more than 63 percent of all restaurant workers admitted to cooking and serving food while sick.
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Resident Shop Talk Expert
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This franchise is standing at a critical fork in the road. Making the wrong decision will doom them.
Their first option is to sue those workers (which will cost a fortune & create even more bad PR) and be perceived as irresponsible villains by their customer base.
Their second option is to give in and don’t make it a secret. Promote it, advertise it. Show some public, transparent, humility, and become heroes to their larger segments (the middle & working class). (I’m assuming the top 25% don’t dine there very often).
Maybe the restaurant should do some research to find out if they actually could charge a little more to enable their workers to have slightly better lives.
I think they’d be surprised to find that many people are not going to balk at a 50 cent increase or so, on certain items if they knew it went to the employees (not to profits).
Then they should take the remainder of what is required to bump up wages and provide maybe — 3 sick days — from the company’s revenue. You could not buy the kind of positive publicity that would generate. Because the people will be watching. I know I’m going to watch to see what they do.
Being fair to your employees would go a long way in the present sickening business ethics environment of this country, where workers are constantly being degraded.