Just days after Foxtrot Market closed without warning, former workers are now demanding 60 days of severance pay, reports CBS News.
Former employees were seen picketing outside Outfox Hospitality’s commissary in Pilsen on Friday.
Arise Chicago, a workers’ rights organization, filed charges with the Illinois Department of Labor on behalf of the disgruntled workers. Arise Chicago said Outfox Hospitality, owners of Foxtrot Market and Dom’s Kitchen & Market, which also closed, failed to give workers the required 60 days’ notice under state and federal law.
According to CBS News, the disgruntled employees assembled and prepared foods sold at Foxtrot and said after Outfox Hospitality took over, things looked to be on the upswing.
Six months ago, Foxtrot and Dom’s merged, but that all came to an end last Tuesday when all 35 locations in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Austin, and Dallas, Texas, closed for the last time.
“We explored many avenues to continue the business but found no viable option despite good faith and exhaustive efforts,” Dom’s shared in a statement to Dom’s and Foxtrot customers on its website.
Less than 24 hours later, an employee filed a class-action lawsuit against Outfox Hospitality on behalf of himself and other affected employees.
The plaintiff, Jamil Ladell Moore, filed the suit against defendants Foxtrot Retail Inc., Outfox Hospitality LLC, and Dom’s Market LLC. According to court documents, Moore and an estimated 1,000 other employees were not provided with the required 60-day notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) or Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (IWARN). Employees at all Foxtrot and Dom’s locations were terminated immediately on April 23 without any prior notice, the documents said, and several employees first learned of the mass layoff in the middle of their work shift on April 23.
None of the employees received pay or other compensation for the notice period, the documents said.
“This class-action suit seeks only damages and any other relief permitted under WARN and IWARN,” said the court documents. The plaintiff “reserves the right to expand, combine or subdivide the class definitions as warranted, as facts are learned in further investigation and discovery.”