Chicago sandwich workers fired 3 days before Christmas: Fight for $15!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Workers at a Snarf’s Sandwiches, located inside of the Groupon Building on Chicago’s North Side, received a nasty surprise on the night of December 22. Based on an e-mail they received, they logged into the online scheduling website only to find that Snarf’s was closing for a 2 week “remodeling” period and they had been “terminated”
All 14 workers (or 20 according to the Huffington Post) had been fired without warning or just cause. Sara Mergenthal was among those Snarf’s workers who reacted with anger and disappointment:
”It’s just so upsetting to me the way they would do that. I never thought of them as a fantastic corporation doing great things for the world, but I never thought they would do that to people who make money for them.”
Most of the Snarf’s workers at her location support the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC) and had joined both the August and recent December 5 Fight for $15 strikes.Some workers had been at Snarfs for as long as 3 years. At the December strike Snarf’s worker Kate Zieglar told me she had been there for 2 1/2 years and still only made $9.50 an hour.
Snarf’s workers had gotten 500 signatures supporting their demands on a petition circulated among other people in the building. The December 5 strike was able to shut down the store for the day.
The strike issues were low wages, no sick leave, no vacation days and no rational system for raises. Snarf’s did institute a complicated rating system so that if a worker scored in the 90th percentile, they might get a raise. One Snarf’s worker told me that most people never got one.
Monday morning at the shuttered Snarf’s
As soon as WOCC organizers got the word about the firings, they began contacting members and supporters to assemble at the Groupon Building on Monday morning, December 23. By around 9 am, more than 30 people had arrived.
Kevin Brown, a Snarf’s worker and WOCC organizer Hannah Joravsky laid out the strategy. Two of us would leaflet people around the building and urge them to call Snarf corporate HQ to protest the firings.The rest of us would go in quietly as a delegation and ask the Snarf’s manager inside to call corporate HQ and tell them to rehire the workers and pay severance.
The shop was closed with a heavy iron gate adorned with a sign saying the it was being “remodeled”, though there was no sign of that inside. William Ravert, the manager finally appeared, and peered out through the grate as a WOCC representative told him:
“We are demanding that you put these workers back on schedule because you did not warn them and let them know there was going to be construction going on and we feel you are retaliating against them. There are more than 30 people here and there are going to be even more people here if you do not call corporate and give these people their money back for the weeks that you took off. You also need to to give these people their jobs back.”
Hannah Joravsky then explained to the manager that WOCC will be filing formal charges, and will let all of the customers in the building know what happened to the employees who had stood up for their rights. Ravert then disappeared into the darkened depths of the store, after saying he would call corporate HQ. Snarf’s workers were skeptical that he would actually do it and figured he was probably just “running away”.
By this time a building security official was in the lobby and clearly unhappy. After some negotiations, the WOCC organizers decided that we should go to the other Snarf’s location at Prudential Plaza near Michigan Ave downtown and demand that the manager of that store call the corporate office.
We meet the manager of the Snarf’s at Prudential Plaza
There were no customers in the shop when we gathered around the front counter of Snarf’s at Prudential Plaza. After some haggling, the manager did agree to call corporate HQ in front of us. He even told us that he agreed with most of WOCC’s demands.
We left chanting, “We’ll be back! We’ll be back!” and gathered outside to plan the call-in to Snarf’s corporate HQ. As I left, WOCC was meeting with the Snarf’s workers to plan further actions. This is the first mass retaliation against a WOCC protest and WOCC does not plan to let this happen without a fight.
In addition, WOCC believes that Snarf’s actions violate federal labor laws and plan to make a case for that. WOCC has already filed an official complaint for a 3 day company enforced lockout after the December 5 strike, claiming that it was retaliation.
Huffington Post reported that Snarf’s corporate HQ finally did issue a response. Director of Marketing Jill Preston said that business had been bad and that the store would reopen as a hamburger joint. She said that while the company could not afford to pay $15 an hour, she also claimed that the workers “…do make a lot of money on tips.”
She expressed regret that no notice of the firings was given, but urged them to collect unemployment and ‘”…keep an eye out for the grand opening of the new store.”
Since she would not guarantee that workers would be rehired at the “new store”, this cheery message came as cold comfort to employees like Kevin Brown, Kate Zieglar and Sara Mergenthal, all of whom had worked so hard to improve conditions at Snarf’s.
As we walked up the stairs away from the Prudential Plaza Snarf’s, Sara Mergenthal told me that while Snarf’s management had always claimed that the workers were a part of the Snarf’s family she now knows that,”They really don’t care about us.”
Like several other Snarf’s workers she will be flying home with news for the family,” Merry Christmas, Mom. I’m unemployed.”
Sources consulted
Snarf’s Sub Shop Just Fired All The Employees At A Chicago Location Via Email, 3 Days Before Christmas by Kim Bellware
The Snarf’s At 600 W. Chicago Just Laid Off All Its Employees Via Email by Meg Graham
Climbing Ben Nevis in the Scottish Highlands
Filed under: Environment
As mountain ranges go, the Scottish Highlands are not very high. None of its mountains top more than 4409 ft (1344m). In contrast Mt. Mitchell in the Southern Appalachians is 6,684 feet (2,037m). Denali in Alaska is 20,320 feet (6,194m) and Everest in Nepal is 29,029 (8,848m).
Yet because of its northern location and ferocity of its weather, the Scottish Highlands is a center for training Everest-bound mountaineers.
I had come to Scotland with Estelle Carol to see the land where some of my extended family still live. And to climb Ben Nevis. As a young boy I was made aware of my Scottish ancestry in a general way and had developed a sense of what it should mean to be Scottish-American.
Fight for $15: The New War on Poverty
Filed under: Uncategorized
“Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.”– Nelson Mandela
The USA has a new War on Poverty, but this one is not led by a US president, but by the low wage workers of this country. The Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC) is a part of this national movement, demanding $15 an hour and a union for retail and fast food workers. This Fight for $15 campaign is a key part of the larger low wage workers movement.
Way back In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared in his State of the Union address,”This administration today, here and now, declares an unconditional War on Poverty in America.”
As part of his War on Poverty, Johnson proposed an ambitious set of social programs rivaling those of Franklin Roosevelt during the Depression of the 1930‘s. Johnson’s War on Poverty ended in surrender beginning in 1968 because of the costly Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon.
Although it did not end poverty, the first War on Poverty was not the total failure that many critics label it. Largely a response to the Civil Rights Movement, it gave us such critical social programs as Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and the Food Stamp Act. Today the USA has some of the worst poverty of any wealthy nation, but it would be far more devastating without these programs. Read more
A Child’s Paradise Lost
“Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate. In all my works I take the part of trees against all their enemies”.—- J.R.R. Tolkien
It was the largest tree my seven year old eyes had ever seen. Stately thick limbs spreading out into a huge leaf canopy that seemed to reach skywards forever. Beneath was a small clearing of grass and dirt where I could admire the tree house that the big kids had built, complete with small boards attached to the tree to make a ladder upwards.
The tree house was sturdily built with a strong platform, a roof of boards and a glassless window where one could look out on the rest of the forest. And best of all, the big kids who built it told me I could use it anytime. I have no idea how old these kids were, probably no more than 12 or 13. But they were nice big kids, not the like the bullies I often encountered in Glenmont MD of the 1950’s.
These big kids were also kind enough to reveal another wonder of the forest. The nearby creek. It was not especially wide, maybe 6-8 ft across and no more than a foot deep. But it ran crystal clear with glittering flecks of mica and small stones scattered across its sandy bottom.
It also contained marvelous creatures I had never seen before. Crayfish. They were small, no larger than the minnows that swam nervously about. The big kids would hold crayfish in their hands and watch them snap their tiny claws in defiance. I had no desire to catch one myself. Seeing one amidst the rocks was enough for my curiosity. Besides they were fast and experts at concealment when they detected any motion from above.
It was a Child’s Garden of Eden. And I had no idea someone actually owned it. I was familiar with peoples’ yards. They surrounded the small bungalows of the neighborhood and were clearly part of each family’s property. Some even had fences around them. Read more
The Chicago Neighborhood Schools Fair: Colorful balloons & brave resistance
Filed under: Education, Society and Economy, Unions
“I’m proud that this Neighborhood Schools Fair came from neighborhood parents— from neighborhood moms. And that they invited people from all over the city to be involved.”— Kim Bowsky, Chicago Public Schools teacher
You might not associate colorful balloons and a room full of school displays with a bold act of resistance, but that is what happened at Roberto Clemente High School on a gray drizzly November day in Chicago. It was the Neighborhood Schools Fair, a testament to the love that Chicago has for its neighborhood schools and their critical importance to the city.
It’s been a tough year for the education justice movement in Chicago. A lot of heartbreaks. A lot of tears. Fifty schools closed. Massive layoffs of teachers and other education workers. Sit-ins and multiple arrests. Parents frantic about their children’s’ safety going to school. Deep emotional ties among favorite teachers and their students broken. A steady stream of insults and lies coming from City Hall and the Chicago Public Schools(CPS) top brass.
The movement really needed affirmation. Something positive and joyful. Thankfully a small circle of activist women who call themselves “The Badass Moms”, or BAM, got together and hatched the idea of a one day exposition where neighborhood schools could set up displays, hold workshops and talk about their successes and their challenges.
Rousemary Vega, one of the BAM’s, told me that the goal was to create a web of relationships among neighborhood schools to build for a better educational future. This web would cross traditional racial and neighborhood lines in one of the most segregated cities in the USA, where neighborhood insularity and distrust of “outsiders” is the stuff of legend. Read more