Author Archives: Seattle Solidarity Network

Pegasus Pizza pays up

Luis and SeaSol have won our second fight against Pegasus Pizza. A few months after our last encounter, Luis was fired for being a few minutes late due to delays in his Metro commute (something that happens to other workers all the time without reprisals). Recognizing this as blatant retaliation for fighting back on the job with us last winter, we demanded that Pegasus Pizza either give Luis his job back or pay him for the two weeks of wages he lost while he was out of work (approximately $600). More background on this fight and the real reasons for Luis’s firing can be found here.

When we started to pass out leaflets in front of their door, many West Seattle locals were not surprised to hear about Ted or Sarah’s exploitative behavior. We heard many stories of people’s friends, family and neighbors having their time sheets tampered with, wages docked and stolen outright in the past. We also received numerous phone calls and emails from former employees that confirmed that Pegasus has been routinely stealing workers’ wages for years. We began to compile these stories into a public blog that the General Manager of Pegasus, Sarah, told us herself was very damaging to their reputation. The owner, Ted, responded by coming into Luis’s workplace and threatening his life. Sarah on the other hand responded with a short press release that claimed they had time sheets proving Luis’s tardiness. We wondered how seriously we were supposed to take these time sheets, after hearing multiple stories about management routinely editing them for their own benefit.

After we started picketing and shutting down a few lunch and dinner rushes, management apparently had enough. They requested a sit-down meeting during which Sarah admitted she had become “irresponsible” with her payroll. After trying and failing to get Luis to sign some sort of legal agreement, she had another manager run and get two money orders made out to Luis for a total of $600. About this fight, Luis says he is “very happy. Really, I think if there had not been SeaSol I would not have been able to do anything. We have one more victory. We’ve beaten some bad people [Ted & Sarah] that treat immigrants very badly. With SeaSol I’ve learned to help people, and that if we wait, nothing will change.”

We hope that Ted and Sarah have learned their lesson and clean up their act before another worker who has been trampled by Pegasus decides it is time to fight back with our help.

Borracchini’s fight ends, as does long tradition of no breaks

We are happy to announce that, after six months of protest, Borracchini’s has finally begun to allow all workers their 10-minute breaks. (Here is more background on the fight.)

Our many actions have included picketing, postering and even a bake sale of “Cakes Made With Breaks.” At every action we reached new people in the neighborhood who told us they wouldn’t be shopping at Borracchini’s because of the conditions there for workers.

We will be suspending our campaign, as long as workers continue receiving their breaks.

We remain disgusted with Remo Borracchini for publicly pledging $10,000 to Children’s Hospital as a public relations move in response to our campaign, and then donating only a tenth of that amount.

Let’s celebrate this improvement in working conditions at Borracchini’s. Stay tuned for details.

Pegasus Pizza fight, part II

Have you or anybody you know been cheated by Ted or Sarah of Pegasus Pizza? If so, please contact us with your story.

This is not the first time we have had a fight with Pegasus Pizza. You can read about our previous encounter with owner Ted Nicoloudakis and General Manager Sarah Suseyi.

Luis had worked for Pegasus for almost three months but had only received a tiny portion of the wages he was owed. Rather, Ted and Sarah only gave him three bad checks from different banks and scores of broken promises, as they have had done to many other previous workers at Pegasus Pizza.

So Luis joined more than 30 Seasol supporters and demanded his pay. Roughly two weeks later, Luis received his $1,924.24 and began to be paid on time. However, immediately after paying Luis his back wages, Ted and Sarah cut Luis’s hours in half, forcing other kitchen workers to work unpaid overtime to cover many of his usual shifts. It was not until we called Sarah and warned her that it was unacceptable and illegal to retaliate against Luis in this way that they stopped cutting his hours.

In addition, Ted and Sarah started to pile extra work onto his shifts and also forbade other staff from talking with him at all. Luis was not happy about this retaliation, but was willing to work through it.

Taking the bus to work, Luis ended up being a few minutes late a couple of times, and two months ago, Ted and Sara finally trumped up an excuse to fire him. Anybody that rides Metro knows that buses do not always run on time, and sometimes our commutes are delayed. While Luis was working for free, being a couple of minutes late occasionally was not an issue.

Since we started this fight, the response of neighbors and people walking by has been overwhelmingly positive. Many people were not surprised to hear Luis’s story. They have had their own stories to share of their friends, neighbors and family not being paid by Pegasus in the past. We have heard numerous stories of Ted and Sarah’s exploitative and shady behavior.

What has been Ted and Sara’s response? Sarah called us once to set up a meeting. We responded, but are still waiting to hear from her. Meanwhile Ted has come into Luis’s new workplace more than once, physically threatening and intimidating Luis – saying he “will be waiting for him outside after work.”

In this letter to customers, Sarah claims to have time sheets showing Luis’s poor attendance. Sarah’s hypocritical claim of moral or legal high-ground on the issue of time sheets at Pegasus would be laughable if her own and other Pegasus boss’s behaviors were not so criminal. Another former employee tells of consistent hours shorting, few breaks, and bosses who are themselves routinely late:

“They constantly short our hours and blame us because we “didn’t clock out on a 30 min mark”, something that is impossible to do unless we drag our feet to the next half hour, something Clara will scream at you for. I have to keep all of my clock out receipts and add them myself in order to prove I was shorted. And when I do, Sarah just rolls her eyes and says “I’ll look into it”. You have to be a persistent pain in the ass to get your real hours.

We do get breaks, but only if we’re working a double. So if you’re working 6-8 hours you’re out of luck. The kitchen staff can only break if we’re not busy. No one ever gets the 10 min breaks we’re supposed to…

I’ve seen the time sheets they are talking about with Luis. I couldn’t say if they’re real or not, since I know for a fact they routinely edit these records for their own benefit [emphasis added]. And as for being late, they should talk! They never show up when they say they will… Clara is constantly late and says she only comes in to wait on tables and make money. The owners son is ALWAYS late, sometimes more than an hour… Until [a former manager who recently resigned] started we were never allowed to call in sick no matter how sick we were and how dangerous it was to the public. [He] didn’t want us there around him or anyone else if we were sick.”

An excerpt from a letter written by a manager who recently resigned:

“I was very clear that I have ZERO tolerance for payroll mismanagement and inappropriate time sheet editing. By “inappropriate editing”, I am referring to your rounding down on the hours. This practice is illegal, immoral and unethical. On several occasions I have had private conversations with staff that has proof that you shorted their hours on a mass scale. This is not just a random 1-2 hours, there has been cases of checks that were shorted up to 20 hours!”

With this public attention, we hope that Ted and Sarah realize they need to pay their current employees in full and on time from here on out. Who knows how much Pegasus owes current and past employees in our city? To be clear: we are demanding Luis be reinstated or they give him two weeks in lost wages for the time he was without a job to replace his work at Pegasus, roughly $600. Wage stealing bosses like Ted can claim no moral or legal high ground in this situation.

Luis and SeaSol are determined to see this fight through to the end.

Congrats LIHI, for stealing $99 despite year-long campaign

When we first met George and agreed to help him fight bogus cleaning fees and get his wrongly held deposit back, we expected it to be a fairly quick and simple process. After all, it was a small amount of money, the landlord was the Low Income Housing Institute, and there was no evidence that George had left his apartment in bad condition. Little did we know that a supposedly charitable organization would turn out to be one of the most determined thieves we have yet encountered.

After fighting them for a few months, we succeeded in making them drop their threat to take George to collections for $40.50 in false charges. But despite a year of massive public embarrassment and proof that their main evidence was bogus, they have remained utterly steadfast in their determination to pocket George’s $99.

Week after week, we pressured LIHI and exposed their outrageous behavior. We picketed their offices. We put up posters all over town about their misdeeds, eventually including a photo of the executive director’s face. We surrounded their opening ceremony for a new building, embarrassing them in front of city officials and local dignitaries. We picketed in front of the executive director’s home. We visited the workplaces of multiple members of the board of directors.

Throughout this year-long campaign, LIHI distinguished itself in many despicable ways. Here are some highlights:

  • LIHI’s first reaction to our demand was to threaten to sue George, who was then homeless.
  • When LIHI asked for a meeting to resolve the dispute, they showed up at the meeting with an armed escort.
  • LIHI argued that returning George’s deposit would be unfair to all the other tenants whose deposits they had kept.
  • LIHI executive director Sharon Lee sent her boyfriend to try to provoke violence on a peaceful picket line.
  • LIHI provided the press with photos of a filthy toilet to justify keeping George’s $99. When we proved that the photos were not even from George’s apartment, they still insisted on keeping his money.

Congratulations, LIHI! Fighting you for a year over $99 has been a joy.

Fight begins against Borracchini’s Bakery “no-breaks” policy

Remo Borracchini’s bakery has been around since 1922, and when it comes to workers’ rights, Remo thinks it’s still 1922. If you work there, you can forget about your legally-mandated 10 minute breaks, unless you are one of the favored few employees who are close to the Borracchini family. Need to use the bathroom? If the store is busy, you might just have to hold it for up to four hours until the unpaid lunch period or until quitting time.

SeaSol member Gladys worked under these conditions for nine years. Like many of her co-workers, she talked about wanting to be allowed to take her breaks, but knew that if she took a stand for her rights, Remo would fire her. Once, she had to sit down for 17 minutes due to a terrible headache. When Remo saw this on his surveillance tapes (yes, he watches his employees on surveillance tapes), she was reprimanded for it.

Finally, when Gladys suffered an on-the-job injury and Remo wanted her to cover it up, she took a stand, informing Washington State Labor & Industries about her injury and claiming her worker’s compensation. After this, Remo retaliated by cutting Gladys’s hours, and later fired her on a flimsy excuse involving an improperly wrapped order. Remo later made up the false claim that he had fired Gladys for being rude to a customer.

Since Gladys was not allowed to take her 20 minutes per day (that’s 10 minutes for every four hours) of legally-mandated paid break time, that means she was putting in an extra 20 minutes of work each day. From nine years of working without breaks, we calculated that Gladys was owed several thousand dollars for that extra working time.

When Gladys presented our demand to Remo, surrounded by dozens of SeaSol members, he refused to even look at her. Afterwards, out of sight of Remo’s cameras, his employees thanked us.

A Very Borracchini Response

Instead of admitting their mistakes, and trying to make amends, the Borracchinis did everything in their power to bully their former employee into silence. They enlisted the support of their friends and managers to call and email death threats to Gladys and SeaSol. They called on right wing talk show host Dori Monson (the same man who has publicly declared that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a cult) to denounce Gladys and her supporters as “thugs”. Monson called on his thousands of listeners to descend on Borracchini’s to counter SeaSol’s first planned picket line on the Saturday before Easter.

The result was underwhelming. Roughly 40 management supporters – mostly Borracchini family members, friends, and managers – gathered in the parking lot to counter-protest against at least 80 SeaSol picketers. To make up for their small numbers, management supporters screamed abuse at picketers – calling them “bitch,” “faggot,” and everything else they could think of. When the insults failed to incite the SeaSol picketers, Remo Borracchini’s middle-aged nephew, a company executive, punched a woman in the face. After this, the police closed off the entrance to the bakery’s driveway as a crime scene, most management supporters withdrew from the area around the SeaSol crowd, and the picket continued until its scheduled ending time. Very few customers entered the bakery during the action.

In spite of management’s best efforts, they have failed to silence Gladys. Their threats, violence, and media smear campaign have only increased SeaSol’s determination and encouraged even more former Borracchini’s employees to speak out against this abusive boss.

The Fight Continues

During the pre-Easter picket, Gladys announced that she would happily yield all of the back pay Borrachini’s owed her to her charity of choice, St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Two days later, Borracchini’s management announced their first major concession: they would be donating $10,000 to St Jude’s. However, they would not be putting Gladys’s name on the donation, nor had they instituted a decent break policy.

Given the company’s disgusting actions in response to our campaign, we cannot be satisfied with this gesture. We want Gladys’s name added onto the donation, and we will continue our fight until all Borracchini’s employees get their scheduled 10-minute breaks every four hours.