Former Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market workers gather to protest outside the Foxtrot Commissary in Pilsen.
Jim Vondruska/Sun-Times
About 20 former Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market employees, along with supporters, held a rally Friday morning to demand 60 days of back pay, after the Chicago-based companies abruptly shuttered all its stores this week.
Protesters stood outside of Foxtrot Commissary in Pilsen, holding signs in English and Spanish that said, “Justice for the laid off employees!” and “Laid off without notice.” The commissary was where operations such as food assembly and labeling took place and where the company’s drivers were based.
Commissary employees said at the rally that they received a same-day notice that Foxtrot was closing on Tuesday, just like staff at the retail stores.
Former commissary worker Adela Maravilla, speaking in Spanish, said she was off work Tuesday, but her supervisor called to break the news.
Maravilla was told any belongings she had in the commissary had to be picked up by noon. While she had several things at work, Maravilla said she left them because she couldn’t stand to go back there.
“Even at this moment, I don’t have the words,” Maravilla said. “I still can’t process it. I still do not believe it that the company would inform me in this fashion.”
On Tuesday, employees and customers learned Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen would immediately close all of its locations. At the time, employees said they learned of the closures just before customers, who were shocked when they spotted store window signs saying “goodbye” and “we are closed.”
Oscar Correa, who was a supervisor at Foxtrot Commissary, worked for the company for about five years. He called the abrupt closure “heartbreaking.”
The news shocked Correa and many other employees, especially since it happened less than six months after Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen merged. After the merger, employees said they were told they could expect more orders, and there was no concern about the company’s finances.
Correa and others are now looking for new jobs, but are urging Foxtrot to “do what is right,” after not providing employees a 60-day notice before the layoffs.
“We were so surprised that nobody could eat anything, nobody could say anything. People were in tears,” former Foxtrot employee Raul Casas said in Spanish. “We do not believe that this is right, and we’re looking for justice.”
Jose Uribe, an organizer with the workers rights organization Arise Chicago, said the rally’s goal was threefold: to give voice to the laid-off workers; inform the community of what happened to the former employees; and encourage other impacted workers to come forward.
“They are not giving up, and they are here to ask [for] what is owed to them,” Uribe said.
Staff said the specialty grocer failed to follow the state and federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification acts by not properly notifying employees that they would be laid off. The Illinois WARN Act requires employers with 75 or more full-time employees to give at least 60 days’ notice before any mass layoff or closure. The federal WARN Act applies to companies with 100 or more employees.
Some of Foxtrot’s former employees contacted Arise about their sudden termination, and the group filed charges with the Illinois Department of Labor on Tuesday.
Uribe said the organization received confirmation from the state’s Department of Labor that its complaint will be investigated. Meanwhile, Arise is staying in touch with affected workers about follow-up actions and ensuring they’re paid for any outstanding vacation or wages.
“We want to make sure they get everything that they’re entitled to under the law,” Uribe said. If not, the group anticipates filing charges.
Meanwhile, a second class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday against Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen in the Northern District of Illinois. The filing said the companies “failed to provide 60 days advance written notice as required by the WARN Act.”
According to the lawsuit, Miguel Torres, an employee at Foxtrot’s Washington, D.C., location, was told as recently as April 20 that “The company would be allowing inventory to run low to show a greater profit margin than it otherwise could. Plaintiff Torres was told by his store manager that this was a tactic to spur investors to provide additional cash for the company’s operations.”
Staff were told that their positions were secure, and should layoffs occur they would receive “plenty of notice,” according to the lawsuit.
But Torres and Aaron Sauber, the other plaintiff in the lawsuit and a former Dom’s Kitchen employee, were terminated Tuesday without notice.
The concerns echo another class-action lawsuit filed this week in the same court by a former Foxtrot worker.
Foxtrot operated 15 locations in Chicago and 17 stores across Dallas and Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Dom’s Kitchen had two Chicago locations, 2730 N. Halsted St. and 1233 N. Wells St.