Thursday, April 25, 2013

Solidarity Fish Fry: Organize! Educate! Agitate!


As the gentle eater is aware, the management at Serb Hall has been trying to bust their unions for almost a year.  As we started the Solidarity Fish Fry to show our how bad things were there for the unions workers:
support for the union workers, we learned just

  • Bad faith bargaining
  • Being targets of harassment (like I just mentioned),
  • Not being allowed to exercise protected rights,
  • Management interrogating workers regarding union activities, and not allowing union representation be present,
  • Stopped providing health care coverage
  • Stopped providing dental coverage
  • Discrimination against potential employees who might be eligible to join the union
And that doesn't include the boorish bully boy of a general manager, Tom Miller, harassing, verbally abusing and threatening union staff in front of the customers.  Fortunately for us, after he got caught on video treating customers poorly, he wasn't seen in public again.

Serb Hall's management was treating their employees so poorly and behaving so badly and illegally that they were reprimanded by the National Labor Relations Board.

Even after all this, management couldn't put their greedy, maleficent ways aside and they kept bargaining in bad faith, ultimately calling an impasse and refusing to return to the negotiations table.  So we refused to return to their tables.

Last week, we learned just how petty these tin tyrants could be when they started becoming punitive with the union workers, punishing them for no reason other than they dared to stand up for their rights:
Serb Hall has decided to stop negotiating with our union. Everyone got raises, while the servers didn't. Also, we servers have lost most of our hours. We only work when there are parties larger than 200 people. Kitchen staff and bussers [sic] are going to do our jobs for us instead. The 2 servers at the top of the seniority list, who have worked there for 30 years or more, will lose several shifts a week. How can management live with basically reducing our salary to only Friday fish fry. People have bills that are based on the income they have been making.
Thus we felt it was time to go back to the old school (of fish) ways of doing things, which means we need to educate people to what's going on.

We need all boots on the ground at Serb Hall at 5 pm Friday evening to help with an educational event.  Randy Bryce will be bringing out educational fliers to share with people.  If you have the time and the supplies, feel free to make and bring some signs.  (Randy said if the signs refer to tartar sauce, they get bonus points.)

We'll stay there for an hour or so and then we will go to Clifford's Supper Club for  our Solidarity Fish Fry.  

If, for some reason, you cannot make it, please feel free to call their "negotiating team" and let them know that you won't spend another dime there - and will make sure that your friends and organizations stay away from there too - until such time that they return to the bargaining table in good faith.  

The people you need to call and their phone numbers are:

  • Tom Miller at 414-331-2219
  • Mike Malsted at 414-241-4018 
  • Don Fluyevas at 414-545-6030
Miller and Malsted are members of the Board of Trustees.  Fluyevas is the Office Manager.

And let them know that you will be sure to tell Clifford's or whatever other places we choose to go to that they have Serb Hall to thank for their business.

I look forward to seeing you all again.

In Solidarity!

PS: And if all else fails, we will unleash our secret weapon!


3 comments:

  1. Where were all the supporters? Went there and saw no one. Was it called off? Do not like Cliffords so went in and we ate. Food good and business appeared very busy.

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    Replies
    1. Tom, you're silly. By the way, tell the elders we send our regards. You will be meeting with them soon.

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  2. The new cod at Serb Hall SUCKS!! I can also picture people passing out leaflets outside of that dump Steakhouse 100 complaining about the alleged rodent droppings that have been observed.
    The bread is the same. The only reason I would go to Serb Hall to eat is because of the people who work there,

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