Sustainable sandwich business proves unsustainable

Workers at the Seattle-area sandwich chain Homegrown say the company's plan to close 10 out of 12 stores amounts to union busting. The announcement came not long after the company’s union ratified a contract promising better pay and benefits.

In a statement, Homegrown's CEO Brad Gillis said the reasons for the closures include rising food and labor costs.

"The sad reality is that these stores have not been performing at the level we need for Homegrown to be sustainable," Gillis said.

That's got to be tough for a company founded on the principle of making a sandwich out of local, sustainable ingredients.

The workers say they don't believe it. To them, the word "unsustainable" applies more to the working conditions they previously had before negotiating a better labor contract with the company, when they say kitchen temperatures could reach 100 degrees for workers near the ovens.

Since the contract promised them heat pay (similar to overtime pay), they say the management has gotten serious about fixing the air conditioning in the kitchen.

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The contract also gave them better health care and increased pay. These wins, and the camaraderie that emerged from fighting for a contract, turned what some of them called a "so-so" job into the best job they'd ever had.

At a small rally in front of company headquarters in Renton, workers shouted “Fight back! Fight back! Fight back!”

The person leading the chant was Sydney Lankford, an active member of the union who was fired, later reinstated, and now is among those being laid off.

So, what does she say to the CEO's assertion that labor costs helped make the business unsustainable?

“Yeah, we haven't seen the books," she said. "They never came to our union, and were like, 'Hey, I can’t, you know, let's work out something different.”

Zane Smith is a union member and one of Homegrown's "Keyholders."

A keyholder?

"It's kind of like a shift lead," he explained. "It's like one level up from the very bottom. It means I make 50 cents more per hour. We're all 'Sandwich Partners' and there are 'Keyholders,' but really, we just work in a restaurant."

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Smith says the recent union contract made a huge difference for employees.

"We won a really big raise and we won affordable health care," he said. "Things that cost a lot of money. But at no point in negotiations did the company say, 'Oh, you know, we're not going to be able to afford this. You know, this contract is going to put us out of business or whatever.'"

"And if they had said that," he continued, "maybe there could have been a conversation [with the union]. But instead it was all behind closed doors, which is exactly what we've been trying to avoid with the union, is those behind-closed-doors conversations."

Lankford said the union is asking for severance pay for all 158 of the laid-off workers, and to see the company's books as a way of verifying or debunking Gillis' claims of financial hardship.

She said she and other union workers believe the closures were a form of retribution for union activities. They say it demonstrates an unwillingness to give workers a living wage.

Homegrown CEO Gillis said the company will keep open just two of the company's locations, in downtown Seattle and Mercer Island.

"By consolidating, we can focus on the two highest-performing locations and our catering business and ensure those do well," Gillis said. "This decision was incredibly difficult to make, but one that we feel was absolutely necessary.”