General Discussion

Omaha Steve

(99,491 posts) Sat Jan 10, 2015, 01:33 AM Jan 2015

Laid-Off Baltimore Workers Beat Disney in Court—And Ask All the Right Questions ... (link added)

http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/laid-off-baltimore-workers-beat-disney-in-court

By some estimates, the city of Baltimore has sunk more than $1.5 billion into its Inner Harbor. Workers and residents want their share too.

Emanuel McCray addresses a crowd of supporters outside the ESPN Zone restaurant where he used to work. Photo courtesy of United Workers.

posted Jan 06, 2015

Emanuel McCray is an army veteran with four combat tours under his belt. Despite his military service and his B.A. in political science, he, like many veterans, had a hard time finding work when he returned to civilian life in 2007. He felt pretty lucky when he finally found a position he loved, working as a host at ESPN Zone—a Disney-owned chain of sports bars. A sports fan, McCray prized the chance to interact with the many athletes who stopped in after games at the nearby stadiums. He hoped to move into management and thought that if he got a salaried position he’d make working at the restaurant his career.

In June of 2010, when McCray had been at the restaurant for almost two years, he arrived at work to find his co-workers in tears. Rumors had leaked in the press that Disney was closing the restaurant because they weren’t making enough money. One week later, Emanuel’s restaurant, along with four other locations in the chain, shut its doors. Around 140 Baltimore workers were left without new jobs, without health care, and without wages and tips from the upcoming busy summer season that supported many of them through the slow winter.

McCray felt betrayed by the owners for not telling employees about the closure directly, and for hiding the information for so long. Fair warning might have made it easier to find other restaurant jobs before the busy summer season was underway. “It was an emotional night. I was furious,” he remembers.

As the closure approached, McCray remembers the company issuing orders to employees not to talk to the media under the threat of losing their severance packages. When severance checks did come, they were calculated based on the average earnings from the past six months, instead of the full year. That meant that they were paid based only on the slower winter months when workers were given fewer shifts and receive smaller tips, right at the beginning of what should have been the busiest time of the year.