CHICAGO — Jason Bladow clocked into his dream job at 6 a.m. Tuesday. A sushi chef at Dom’s Kitchen & Market in Old Town, Bladow had been with the high-end grocery store chain for less than three months.
By 10 a.m., he learned he no longer had a job.
Now, the Illinois Department of Labor has launched an investigation to determine if the companies violated the state’s WARN Act, according to an agency statement. The act requires businesses of a certain size to give notice to employees who will be laid off, among other things.
Bladow was among hundreds of employees let go after 33 Foxtrot stores and two Dom’s Kitchen & Market stores abruptly closed Tuesday, including locations in Dallas, Austin and Washington, D.C. The news sent shock waves across the city, with many taking to social media to express disdain for how company executives handled the closures.
The closures have prompted a class-action lawsuit and a complaint to the city. It has also raised questions about whether Chicago should create its own alert law for small businesses that shut down with no notice to employees.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges Outfox, the parent company of Foxtrot and Dom’s, had 100 or more employees in Illinois, making it subject to the WARN Act, which legally requires a 60-day notice to employees of mass firings from businesses with at least 75 full-time employees. No closure notices for the company appear to have been made on the state’s WARN report.
It’s unknown how many full-time employees Outfox had in Illinois.
Bladow got his job at Dom’s Kitchen & Market after graduating from the Silver Fork program. Provided by Center on Halsted, Silver Fork is an intensive, seven-week culinary crash course aimed at low-income LGBTQ+ Chicagoans, with an emphasis on job placement and certifications.
“I felt like I finally had my lucky break. I got accepted into a highly selective culinary arts program, I graduated, and I landed my dream job as a sushi chef,” Bladow said. “After the decision to shut everything down, it felt like my dream had been ripped away from me.
“Today I feel like I’m in a waking nightmare, but the reality is my dream job is gone and I’m unemployed, thanks to white-collar money mismanagement.”
It’s not the first time Chicago workers have experienced such an abrupt closure. Last year, Rock Bottom Brewery Downtown laid off its entire staff overnight. In 2022, Pink Taco in River North laid off its entire staff after promising them their jobs would be safe during a company rebranding. Both businesses were too small to trigger the state’s WARN Act.
The CHAAD Project, a grassroots hospitality advocacy organization, hopes this latest closure will push Chicago to create its own WARN Act to protect workers at small businesses from a last-minute layoff.
“Maybe not a 60-day notice like the WARN Act, but maybe a two-week notice that still allows employees to start filing for unemployment, preparing their resume,” said Raeghn Draper, co-founder and director of communications for CHAAD. “It just gives people more of an opportunity to prepare.”
Businesses close across Chicago all the time, but that doesn’t mean workers shouldn’t get advance notice, especially if the company knows ahead of time, Draper said.
Staff members from Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market told Block Club there were signs the company was in trouble.
Declan Rhodes, a shift leader at Foxtrot in the Gold Coast, said his location stopped receiving shipments of certain items last week. On Tuesday morning, his manager held a company-wide virtual meeting that had been…
This article was originally published by a blockclubchicago.org . Read the Original article here. .