Employees fired in December by Snarf’s Sandwiches, a Colorado-owned sandwich shop west of Loyola’s Water Tower Campus in River North, have been offered their old jobs back and a month’s worth of back pay after the Worker’s Organizing Committee of Chicago helped broker a deal with the company. Although the company asserted that the employees were dismissed so that the owners could consider changing the restaurant’s format “due to increased competition and losses,” labor advocates charged that the employees were fired for participating in the national “Fight for 15” minimum-wage labor protests a few weeks earlier.
“The agreement between the employees and the Colorado-based sandwich shop chain came about after reports of the firing were followed with numerous articles and subsequent outrage from labor rights groups. The employees were fired via email, three days before Christmas. Ownership cited “increased competition and losses” for the move and indicated there would be a possible re-concepting of the store at 600 W. Chicago Ave. into a burger joint.”
Tags: unions, workers rights
