Article

2024-06-13 -Great Cultural Revolution

Three Philly Coffee Shops Forced To Close After Unionization Attempts Result In "Staggering" Costs

[ZH] Turns out trying to extort the person paying your salary isn't the best way to go about making sure a business is successful.

Take Philadelphia, for instance, where a chain of three OCF Coffee Houses are closing down "immediately" after its workers informed the owner of their intent to unionize.

Instead, now, none of them have jobs.

Real estate developer Ori Feibush, who owns the shops, met with employees on Monday said the shut down was a "difficult decision" and said that rising costs and reduced sales contributed to the decision, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

He wrote in a letter to staff: "But we pushed forward because we understood the positive impact we were making in our communities and the importance to maintain a level of compensation and benefits ... that you each deserved."

Then he wrote that "the administrative and legal costs associated with your desire to organize has regrettably moved us beyond any cost that we could sustain."

Feibush said about 45 people worked at OCF’s three coffee shops. He noted that workers, earning $20 to $25 per hour plus benefits, would receive three months of health, vision, and dental coverage, with some eligible for severance.

On June 3, 23 OCF employees presented Feibush with a letter seeking voluntary union recognition and went public with their campaign on social media. They intend to join Local 80, which represents several Philadelphia cafés. They filed for a union vote with the National Labor Relations Board on June 5.

The owner told the Inquirer when reached by phone: "This is a significant part of my personal and professional life. I’m sad that it’s abrupt as it is and this is certainly not the narrative or the story that I had hoped for. This just feels like everyone’s a loser."

He said of the costs of responding to the unionization were "staggering beyond anything — tens of thousands of dollars in just the [last] week and a half."

"It put its finger on the scale in such a profound way as it relates to the finances of the organization that it was just a strain that we couldn’t reliably overcome."

One barista (former) told the Inquirer: "This does feel like retaliation." Another said: "It’s all just so incredibly sudden. We’re all just in the lurch trying to figure out what to do."

"There was some talk of shutting down but we genuinely believed that our connections with the community, especially in Fairmount, are so strong that he wouldn’t do it — we’re where people get their drinks and their lunch and have meetings every single day," the first barista continued.

He continued, railing on the owner: "I just think it’s really reflective of how little Ori actually cares about the community to shut down these locations."

Alex Riccio, a Local 80 spokesperson and the organizing coordinator of the Philadelphia Joint Board (PJB) of Workers United added: "OCF workers took a courageous stand against a bully boss ... That same bully boss chose to shutter his operations, without even the grace of advance notice."

It looks like now the baristas will have find a new "bully boss".

Posted by Frank G 2024-06-13 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11144 views ] Top
File under: Commies

#1 They learn nothing from this. They hate capitalists so shut them all down!

Posted by Cromonter Spawn of the Faeries8107 2024-06-13 02:36|| 2024-06-13 02:36|| Front Page Top

#2 Ori Feibush is not Bezos. Can't afford to throw away 77 million a year on a hobby.

Posted by Procopius2k 2024-06-13 07:55|| 2024-06-13 07:55|| Front Page Top

#3 The kidz who are so baffled that their actions made their jobs vanish learned everything they know about economics in gummint schools. Up until now.

Posted by M. Murcek 2024-06-13 08:11|| 2024-06-13 08:11|| Front Page Top

#4 "rising costs and reduced sales"
There's no situation so bad that you can't make it worse if you try.
"This does feel like retaliation."
No, you just priced yourself out of the market, Bubba.

Posted by ed in texas 2024-06-13 08:31|| 2024-06-13 08:31|| Front Page Top

#5 People who will pay $10-15 for a cup of coffee are economically illiterate also.

Posted by M. Murcek 2024-06-13 09:06|| 2024-06-13 09:06|| Front Page Top

#6 Looking at the menu, I don't think the target clientele has to be economically literate.

What I see, is local businessman entrepreneur defeats Starbuck's three times, just to be undercut by retarded children.

That part of the decision was difficult; the numbers part was easy.

Now instead of working for a trendy local cafe, they will now work for corporate who has the resources to tell your local worker's club to piss off, and will open its doors to the walking homeless and they will be picking needles out of the toilet.

Posted by swksvolFF 2024-06-13 10:38|| 2024-06-13 10:38|| Front Page Top

#7 They called his bluff. He wasn't bluffing.

Posted by Deacon+Blues 2024-06-13 11:40|| 2024-06-13 11:40|| Front Page Top

#8 Looking at the menu, at the ambiance, the neighborhood, OCF wasn't selling coffee or sandwiches, but an experience. So even though each and every one of these chucklehead employees could be replaced by a machine right down to the custom picture on the top of their coffee and without the drama, that doesn't work for the experience. Conversely, can't sell three slices of French Toast for $40 no matter how fancy the lads are.

But these loser children wanted their coffee making and table clearing to be lifelong sustainable careers they broke something nice, and Ori was smart enough to not play footsie with some social media crap and try to drag along for three months losing his ass, waiting for that massive social media commitment to patronize the stores in support of the crybullies, which never comes.

I hope he sells to Panera, and Panera starts bussing in the walking homeless for free meals and a photo op which gets all of corporate nodding their heads in approval as a photo inside the end of year report, while the walking homeless set up camp in the fancy lad neighborhoods, and this former barista works there and now has to clean crap off of the bathroom ceiling, as soon as the junkie in there gets narconed and removed.

Posted by swksvolFF 2024-06-13 12:28|| 2024-06-13 12:28|| Front Page Top

#9 The workers won’t get 40K - 50K per year from the competition. That’s for sure.

Posted by KBK 2024-06-13 12:44|| 2024-06-13 12:44|| Front Page Top

#10 Gee - more bad luck in Philly? It's a mystery.

Posted by Rex Mundi 2024-06-13 13:24|| 2024-06-13 13:24|| Front Page Top

#11 Commenter at ZH states "Turns out trying to extort the person paying your salary isn't the best way to go about making sure a business is successful."

Posted by Mullah Richard 2024-06-13 17:05|| 2024-06-13 17:05|| Front Page Top

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