Workers at a Chipotle in Maine have accused the company of union-busting after it abruptly closed the location amid an effort to unionize.
Last month, several Chipotle employees at a store in Augusta signed union cards indicating their intent to join what they dubbed Chipotle United and filed a petition to unionize. Those workers are now planning to protest on Tuesday after the chain announced that the store would permanently close ahead of the next step in the unionization process.
Brandi McNease, one of the store’s employees and a member of Chipotle United, told the Bangor Daily News that the closure was announced right before the National Labor Relations Board could carry out a hearing to determine how a union election would be carried out.
“They waited until the morning of the hearing to close the store and then claimed we couldn’t elect to form a union because we’re permanently closed,” said McNease. “This is union busting 101 and there is nothing that motivates us to fight harder than this underhanded attempt to shut down the labor movement within their stores.”
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Employees are reportedly planning a Tuesday afternoon rally outside the store, which would have been the first Chipotle to unionize, in protest of the move.
When contacted by the Washington Examiner, Chipotle provided a statement from Laurie Schalow, the company’s chief corporate affairs officer. Schalow said the decision to close the store came as a result of staffing challenges.
She said that despite Chipotle’s best efforts, the company was unable to staff the location, which had been “plagued with excessive call-outs and lack of availability from existing staff.”
“The employees at our Augusta restaurant will receive severance pay and outplacement assistance,” Schalow said. “Closing the Chipotle restaurant in Augusta, Maine has nothing to do with union activity. Our operational management reviewed this situation as it would any other restaurant with these unique staffing challenges. Chipotle respects our employees’ rights to organize under the National Labor Relations Act.”
McNease said that, in response to the closure, Chipotle United has lodged an unfair labor practice complaint with the NLRB.
Workers at the now-shuttered location will reportedly receive pay for the rest of this week and then be entitled to a month of severance based upon how much time they worked in the previous two weeks.
Staffing problems were one of the reasons employees at the Augusta store wanted to unionize in the first place.
Employees at the location had said that the understaffing was so bad they had to falsify food temperature logs because they didn’t have enough time to check them as scheduled, according to the Kennebec Journal.
“I care about these people more than anybody else,” said Laramie Rohr, another employee at the location. “I hope to improve working conditions, not have to have five people working 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, to have the ability to close when you need to for safety reasons.”
The store’s efforts are part of a larger unionization wave around the country.
Late last year, the first Starbucks store in the United States voted to unionize. That set off efforts at stores across the country, and in just months, more than 70 stores in 25 states voted to be represented by a union.
Earlier this year, an Amazon warehouse in New York became the first to vote to unionize, as did an REI store in New York, and later, a Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts became the first to file for a union election.
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Dan Bowling, a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law, told the Washington Examiner last month that the rekindled unionization efforts sparking across the country are coming in part because of a more highly educated and younger workforce.
“There is a rise in attention. Unions are now on the radar screens of younger workers to an extent they haven’t been in my career,” Bowling said.
