Suspended employees who participated in a union organizing drive at Mother’s Market & Kitchen in Costa Mesa were fired by the grocer’s private equity parent.
The 15 employees were terminated Friday, Aug. 21 via FedEx letter, after protesting at the small supermarket chain’s flagship store in Costa Mesa where they were supporting efforts to unionize seven of the 12 Mother’s locations in Southern California.
Dorothy Carlow, chief executive officer of Mother’s Market, could not be reached for comment.
The owner of the grocery chain, Connecticut-based Mill Road Capital, also owns Rubio’s Coastal Grill, Noodles & Co., and Skullcandy, a maker of headphones, earbuds and speakers.
Initially, the Mother’s Market workers were suspended indefinitely without explanation Aug. 3 and were told they would still receive compensation, according to one of the 15 workers, cashier Jacob Ramos, who maintained that workers were penalized for being active in the union’s campaign to organize.
“I’m frustrated and disappointed,” said Ramos, an Irvine resident. “Our termination letters had no reason why we were fired. We view this as an intimidation to keep us quiet.”
The organizing drive at Mother’s is being led by the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 324. The workers say they are struggling with low minimum wages at $16.90 hourly, chronic understaffing in the stores and last-minute worker scheduling, according to UFCW spokeswoman Leigh Shelton.
The UFCW-supported workers with Mother’s — many of whom have signed union cards pledging unionization — previously told the Southern California News Group that they were worried about losing their jobs should the chain be sold.
The union filed unfair labor practice charges on Sunday, Aug. 23 with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging union retaliation for the firings.
The unionization effort has caught the eye of Irvine City Council, which moved to support an ordinance to temporarily preserve hundreds of jobs at Mother’s Market.
On Aug. 11, the council voted 5-2 to delay its decision on the proposal to a Sept. 22 meeting after Irvine Mayor Larry Agran threw his support behind the measure, which backs workers’ rights to keep their jobs for 90 days without fear of being fired during a corporate takeover. The new owner can offer a job to the workers during the first 90 days, but there’s no guarantee that any of them will be retained afterward.
A 2015 state law already protects grocery workers who are squeezed out in larger chain mergers — but worker protections are minimal for those at small store formats, like Mother’s Market and even Trader Joe’s.
Many of the fired workers saw Carlow, the company’s CEO, recently touring the Irvine and Costa Mesa stores with potential buyers while leafletting in support of the union was taking place.
“Certain workers were sent to the Irvine store to clean it up. We were leafletting at the time, and we approached the CEO and potential buyers with suits and tried to talk to them, but they ignored us and walked to their cars,” Shelton said.
The proposed Irvine ordinance is modeled after state law, which helps grocery workers retain their jobs in the event of a merger or sale of the business. The city’s proposal, called the Irvine grocery worker retention ordinance, would close a loophole in the state law, which only applies to big grocery stores with formats larger than 15,000-square feet, according to a memo attached to the proposed ordinance.
The first Mother’s was founded in Costa Mesa in 1978 by a group of yoga enthusiasts that included Bruce Macgurn. At the time, it was one of the only large-scale health and natural food stores operating in Orange County. While first catering to vegetarians, the market has since grown its shoppers to include those seeking organic, preservative-free and non-genetically modified foods.
Macgurn died in November 2015.
