Marco worked for a restaurant called Jumbo Buffet in White Center for 4 months- overworked and underpaid. He worked 6 days a week for at least 10 hours a day for only $60 a day. He was given no overtime pay and no breaks. After getting in touch with SeaSol he decided to tell his boss that he was sick of these horrible working conditions. On March 10th, fifty SeaSol members marched into Jumbo Buffet to support Marco as he walked out of the kitchen and told his boss he refused to work under these conditions for another minute. Now he is on strike, demanding that he be paid the wages he is owed and that Jumbo pay all of their employees at least minimum wage, pay for overtime, and give employees breaks.

This conflict is not only about justice for Marco, it is about justice for all of Jumbo’s employees. Other former employees have already gotten in touch with us about how they were treated when they worked at Jumbo and how much money they’re still rightfully owed. Now Marco and SeaSol have begun distributing fliers, putting up posters, and holding small demonstrations outside of the buffet informing would-be customers about the establishment’s despicable labor practices.

Most people who SeaSol members have spoken with outside the restaurant on Sundays (Jumbo’s busiest day) are local residents and their families coming to eat a late lunch after church. They were largely surprised and distressed to hear that their favorite all-you-can-eat turned out to be shorting their neighbor on his wages. By a rough estimate, at least 75% of potential customers have turned away immediately after hearing Marco’s story. They have been happy to take their business elsewhere. There is a tremendous amount of support and solidarity in this community and we can have little doubt that with their help Jumbo Buffet will be forced to change their ways if they expect to remain in business. Please get in touch to learn more about how you can help Marco and SeaSol with this and other campaigns.

Seattle Solidarity Network’s campaign of direct action finally convinced thieving boss Eric Galanti to pay Lucio his long-withheld wages. Lucio was a cook at the Admiral Pub in West Seattle; when Lucio was deported to Mexico, Galanti took advantage of the situation by withholding Lucio’s final paycheck. But with the support of Lucio’s family here in Seattle, Seasol fought for the payment of Lucio’s wages.

In late August, Seasol member Luis told us his uncle Lucio had been detained by ICE and was facing deportation to Mexico. Adding to Lucio’s problems, his boss Eric Galanti had refused to pay him his final paycheck. Not only was the paycheck theft unjust; now Lucio was faced with arriving in Tijuana without money for food or transportation back to his hometown. Soon, Lucio was indeed deported to Mexico. Friends helped him with money for the trip, while Luis and other Seasol members went to work on the long fight to get Lucio his stolen wages.

On September 19, 2012, thirty or so Seasol members and supporters walked into Admiral Pub in West Seattle. Seasol delivered a letter demanding that Galanti pay Lucio his unjustly withheld wages within the next two weeks. Galanti didn’t pay, and Seasol went into action, getting the word out, letting Seattle know about Lucio’s unfair treatment. Months of pickets at Admiral Pub followed. In January, Seasol and Luis brought the fight to another bar Galanti owns, Bourbon Jack’s in Kent.

It wasn’t Galanti the proud and stubborn boss who sat down with Seasol members and a member of Lucio’s family at a Taco Bell in Kent on a Friday night, to negotiate a surrender. Instead, here was a man whose two bars had seen four vuvuzela-tooting, sign-waving, chants-chanting, flyers-handing-out, revenue-draining pickets in just the past three weeks. That night Galanti gave in. For months he’d denied and haggled and moaned and lied, but in the end he wrote a check to one of Lucio’s relatives for the money Lucio had earned.

Seasol is demanding payment of Lucio’s stolen wages. For years, Lucio worked as a cook at the Admiral Pub in West Seattle, until he was deported to Mexico in August, 2012. Pub-owner Eric Galanti promised he would pay Lucio his last paycheck of $800. To date, the Admiral Pub has still not paid Lucio what he earned.

Seasol, alongside Lucio’s family, has taken the fight to Galanti’s two businesses, picketing the Admiral Pub in West Seattle and Bourbon Jack’s in Kent. Seasol will continue until Admiral Pub and Eric Galanti decide to do what is right. For more information, see boycottadmiralpub.com.

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.