Employees at 10 Minneapolis-based Jimmy John’s sandwich shops have reportedly voted against joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which has since alleged that the close election “was marred by misconduct.” According to The New York Times, “[U]nion supporters were predicting victory, noting that about 60 percent of the restaurants’ 200 workers had signed prounion cards asking the labor board to hold a unionization vote.” But when the National Labor Relations Board called the October 22, 2010, election, it reported that union backers fell short of a majority by three votes. With seven days to file objections, the Jimmy John’s Worker Union has charged MikLin Enterprise with 22 violations of the National Labor Relations Act, including bribery and intimidation. “We do not recognize these election results as legitimate and will continue to fight for our demands,” stated the group’s spokesperson in a press release. The vote was apparently IWW’s…
Tag Archives labor
According to a news source, a Brazilian judge has ordered McDonald’s Corp. to pay one of its former franchise managers US$17,500 because he gained 65 pounds over the 12 years he worked for the company. He reportedly claimed that he was required to sample all of the restaurant’s foods everyday to ensure their quality, and he consumed the free lunches that were offered to company employees. The 32-year old man apparently convinced the court that he had to sample the food because McDonald’s hired people to make unannounced visits to its restaurants to guarantee that food, cleanliness and service standards were maintained. See Product Liability Law360, October 28, 2010.
“Sorry to scare you, but on Halloween much of the chocolate Americans will hand out to trick-or-treaters will be tainted by the labor of enslaved children,” writes Andrew Korfhage in this October 18, 2010, AlterNet article alleging that chocolate manufacturers have failed to eradicate child labor practices as promised. According to the author, Hershey’s and other companies pledged “nearly a decade ago to set up a system to certify that no producers in their supply chains use child labor,” but have yet to take any “meaningful action.” Korfhage credits a 2001 exposé with documenting the “scandalous conditions under which most U.S. chocolate is made,” noting that the effort spurred Representative Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to introduce legislation seeking “slave-free” certification for all U.S. chocolate. “[B]ut before Harkin’s bill could pass the Senate, the chocolate industry had announced a voluntary four-year plan to clean up its own…
Twenty-seven waiters, busboys and others at New York City’s Del Posto restaurant have reportedly filed a lawsuit against owner Mario Batali and partners Joseph and Lidia Bastianich, claiming that they were not paid a legal wage. The plaintiffs allege that the restaurant’s managers pooled workers’ tips in violation of state labor laws and wrongfully withheld a portion of the gratuities on wine and cheese sales. The tip pool was allegedly divided on the basis of a point system, and the plaintiffs also reportedly contend that staff working banquets did not get their proper share of the service charge billed to customers, instead receiving a flat fee. The suit, which is at least the third involving a Batali-owned facility, seeks back pay, unspecified damages and attorney’s fees. See msnbc.com, October 12, 2010.
Renowned restaurateurs Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich have reportedly been sued by workers in their East and West Coast restaurants. A complaint filed in late July 2010 by current and former employees of New York City’s Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca was amended to include a class of employees who work in five additional east coast eateries. They reportedly allege that the Batali-Bastianich enterprise “unlawfully confiscated a portion of their workers’ hard-earned tips in order to supplement their own profit. At the end of every shift, instead of distributing customers’ credit card tips to the workers who earned them as the law requires, Mr. Batali, Mr. Bastianich, and their restaurants took from the tip pool an amount equal to approximately 4-5% of the restaurants’ wine sales (and sometimes other beverage sales) for the night and put it in their own pockets.” The New York plaintiffs are apparently seeking class certification and…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that an agreement among grocery chains in Southern California to share profits during an anticipated labor strike was anticompetitive in violation of the Sherman Act and rejected defendants’ argument that the violation could be excused because the agreement was designed to be used as an economic weapon in a labor dispute. California v. Safeway, Inc., Nos. 08 55671, 08-55708 (9th Cir., decided August 17, 2010). According to the court, despite the limited duration of the agreement and the fact that the groceries involved constituted, at most, 70 percent of the market, the agreement was anticompetitive because it removed all incentive to compete by providing lower prices or better service to consumers. The court disagreed that the defendants needed the pact to effectively bargain with striking employees. In this regard, the court stated, “Defendants claim no purpose for their agreement beyond strengthening their hands…
Human Rights Watch has issued a report titled “Fields of Peril: Child Labor in US Agriculture” that describes the working conditions facing the nation’s youngest field laborers and calls for changes to federal employment and environmental laws to provide them with greater protections. According to the report, child farmworkers as young as age 12 often work for 10 or more hours per day, five to seven days a week. Some begin working part-time at ages 6 or 7. Many of the labor law protections for other youth workers apparently do not apply to agricultural workers, and Human Rights Watch reportedly found that many children earn far less than minimum wage, particularly when they are paid for production rather than by the hour and when their employers charge them for tools, gloves and drinking water. They also have higher rates of dropping out of school and experience higher numbers of fatalities…
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has returned to a federal district court litigation alleging that a karate instructor was fired because he was obese in violation of a New York City law that forbids disability-based workplace discrimination. Spiegel v. Schulmann, No. 06-5914 (2d Cir., decided May 6, 2010). According to the appeals court, no cases have yet addressed whether the city law applies to the obese, and the lower court was directed to consider whether the plaintiff had made a prima facie case of discrimination under that law. The plaintiff, who claimed his roommate was fired from a similar position after the plaintiff notified the defendant that he intended to file an employment discrimination charge, also alleged unlawful retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Affirming the lower court’s dismissal of this claim, the appeals court found that the ADA does not permit an individual to be held liable…
Some two years after a raid on a Postville, Iowa, kosher slaughterhouse for the employment of hundreds of illegal immigrants, charges of child-labor law violations are apparently about to be tried in state court against former executive Sholom Rubashkin. Prosecutors reportedly dropped many related charges against other individuals on the eve of trial. Rubashkin, who was also charged with bank, mail and wire fraud and violations of the Packers & Stockyards Act, appeared at a federal court sentencing hearing in late April 2010, facing a potential life sentence in prison. According to news sources, the court will hand down a sentencing order sometime in May; a number of former U.S. attorneys general and U.S. attorneys submitted a letter to the court to express concern about the imposition of a life sentence on a first-time, non-violent offender. See National Law Journal and The Blog of Legal Times, April 26, 2010; Feedstuffs.com,…
A putative class action has been filed against individual plant managers and human resources personnel responsible for hiring employees at 16 Perdue Farms, Inc. facilities in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in the hiring of illegal immigrants. Walters v. McMahen, No. 10-257 (M.D. Ala., filed March 22, 2010). The named plaintiffs seek to represent a class of legally employed workers whose wages were allegedly depressed because of the illegal scheme to hire at “extremely low wages” hundreds of employees who were in this country illegally. The plaintiffs also seek treble damages, preliminary and permanent injunctions, attorney’s fees, and costs. Among other matters, the plaintiffs allege that the illegal hiring scheme consisted of (i) “hiring workers who have previously been employed at Perdue under different identities”; (ii) hiring workers known to be using false identity documents; (iii) “hiring workers who cannot speak…
