2-11-06, 9:06 am
TORONTO - Saturday, January 28, marked the latest of a series of pickets against a criminal boss at Amato Pizza. But the boss can be warned - unless workers demands are met, pickets will continue! Ex-Amato workers and supporters have been picketing the restaurant since their boss began breaking the labour code by giving bounced cheques to workers instead of real wages, and not paying them overtime. These claims are becoming increasingly common in the five chains of the franchise now owned by two sons and a friend of the original owner.
The battle began last June when a young woman came to Parkdale Community Legal Services claiming that $8000 of her wages went unpaid. The result was a slew of solidarity pickets - an attempt to force the owner to pay up by disturbing his business at peak hours. Fourteen pickets later, the worker won her pay in September.
But the struggle became more drawn out in December, when seven more workers filed complaints, totalling another $82,000 of unpaid wages. The employer also scheduled workers for as many as 92 hours a week and paid them no overtime. 'This is an employer who has a bit of a history of not paying workers what they're owed,' says Mary Gellatly of Parkdale Community Legal Services.
The Ontario Ministry of Labour received several complaints against Amato regarding unpaid wages, and workers demanded that the Ministry of Labour do an investigation on the workplace. But when the ministry finally got around to it, they only interviewed the boss, not the workers, and only investigated the records on paper, which the boss had been tampering with. The ministry has not yet reached a conclusion.
But although the $82,000 of unpaid wages has not materialized, the workers are putting up a good fight. Many Torontonians now know about the case, and passerby on the picket line have been quite supportive. There is a myth that bosses will be prosecuted if something like this happens. 'They think the law will protect us,' says John No, who has been working on the case as a part of Parkdale Legal Services since June. But more and more workersare realizing that the law isn't on our side. Support has been mounting for a case many ex-Amato workers and other workers alike can relate to.
The campaign has also been successful in the media. One article in the Toronto Star, though ultimately siding with the boss, shows a photo of the boss overtaking a young, harmless picketer, a typical portrait of the boss' character. He likes to egg on the picketers hoping that they will start a fight with him, but when that fails, he just starts them himself. He also has a track record of being ruthlessly racist and sexist, which makes it no coincidence why the six workers whose cheques bounced were all from Sri Lanka. The owner even went to the extreme of putting a sign in his window that read, 'Amato doesn't deal with terrorists from the same country,' to illustrate the true capitalist he is.
But for Amato workers and supporters, this is just another sign that the owner is becoming more and more desperate. The boss can be assured that the workers will not stop picketing until workers wages are paid in full.
From People's Voice
