- cross-posted to:
- ontario
- cross-posted to:
- ontario
From the GoFundMe description:
On December 5th, workers at Democracy found out that our café was unexpectedly closing in less than two weeks.
We were officially laid off on December 21st, four days before Christmas.
The news hit only two months after our first union contract was ratified. As a team, we worked hard to win a contract that protected our job security, our safety, and basic fairness. Even though many of us were unfairly targeted for our union work (we even filed a Labour Board complaint and were compensated for the union-busting we experienced), we kept fighting for fairness.
Now, owner Chris Mindorff is claiming that he can’t operate the café “due to the recent resignations of key management.”
This notice came less than 24 hours after our General Manager announced her resignation. That same week, our Assistant General Manager also resigned. No workers were approached about taking on manager tasks, and to our knowledge there was no search to hire a replacement manager.
The shocking truth? Chris transferred our General Manager and Assistant General Manager to new jobs at his non-unionized cafés. Chris owns five other “small” businesses in the Hamilton area – Mulberry Coffeehouse, Paisley Coffeehouse, Donut Monster, RedChurch Cafe, and Station One.
As workers, we are heartbroken to lose our community at Democracy.
We are gutted to overhear managers misleading customers about their “resignation”.
We are angered that the year we spent building a safer, better workplace is being tossed down the drain.
And we are terrified about unexpectedly losing our jobs so close to the holidays.
The community’s response to Democracy’s closure has been incredibly touching. We have been overwhelmed by the support and encouragement we’ve received.
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The cafe is named Democracy and they closed after the workers unionized?
That business deserves to fail, along with the “other businesses operated by the same owner”.
Mulberry, Paisley, and Station One according to CBC.
I bet picketing those would be effective.
Can’t possibly be legal, and fuck them
Hopefully, their other employees at the other businesses will unionize, too.
Hopefully, the entire world unionizes. I also hope for other things along these same lines, involving sharp pieces of metal moving at high speed with force.
You can say guillotine on the fediverse.
The name of the café seems to be “Democracy.” How ironic.
Not really, what’s democracy ever done for workers
Democracy’s done a lot for workers. Ask NYCers who now have free transit thanks to Mamdani. Ask California fast food workers making $20/hour. You’re not mad at democracy, you’re mad at those who seek to undermine it (and do). Electorates used to have a voice and exert pressure. Some still do. Many of us Canadians are probably still feeling sore about being screwed over by Carney, who’s turned out only to be ‘elbows up’ to working class Canadians, marginalized groups, our natural environment, and future generations. So long as people get their news from billionaire-controlled platforms, the billionaires - who are key, perhaps the key democracy-underminers - will tend to win though
