Dessert chain Milk Bar and its superstar chef and proprietor Christina Tosi got here beneath fireplace this weekend following the bakery’s current shutdown in Harvard Sq.. Workers on the now-shuttered store, which closed on February 19, posted a joint assertion to their private Instagram accounts on Saturday, February 25, alleging that the closure might have been in retaliation over the group’s current resolution to unionize.
Milk Bar’s eight staffers on the Harvard Sq. store voted to unionize “after practically a 12 months of unsavory work situations, extreme pay discrepancies, and a blatant regular decline in funding of its employees and bodily house,” the assertion on Instagram reads.
On January eleventh, workers introduced the shop’s administration with a bodily letter asserting their intent to unionize with native store NEJB Unite Right here. On the identical day, hours after the letter was delivered, Milk Bar president Keith Levy despatched an e mail to employees stating that the shop’s lease had been terminated and it was going to close down, placing your entire employees out of labor.
“On this deeply casual and unexpectedly written e mail during which a number of employees members’ names have been misspelled, it was introduced with no proof nor clarification that the owner at 3 Brattle Road had chosen to not renew the lease,” reads the assertion on Instagram recounting the incident. (The staffers declined to touch upon the allegations when contacted by Eater.)
The staff are actually calling on Milk Bar to publicize documentation corroborating Levy’s account to be able to “dispel any suggestion of retaliation towards us, their unionized staff,” the assertion reads.
A spokesperson for the bakery chain instructed Eater in an e mail that they’re working to get permission from the owner at 3 Brattle Road to share the lease termination letter with employees.
In response to the spokesperson, the corporate was beneath a sublease settlement with one other former tenant within the house, &Pizza, the fast-casual pizza chain that Milk Bar initially partnered with for its Boston growth. When &Pizza closed up store final Might, the spokesperson says, the owner agreed to permit Milk Bar to maintain working out of its partial house.
Then, the spokesperson says that the owner notified Milk Bar at first of January that their sub-lease was being terminated. Weeks later, NYC pizza icon Joe’s Pizza introduced that it could be taking on your entire house at 3 Brattle Road in its first-ever Boston growth.
“We didn’t shut this location in response to union actions,” the spokesperson stated. “The closeness in proximity to our crew member’s communication sharing their intent to unionize was purely and sadly coincidental. Not proudly owning this storefront outright, and given our restricted standing as a former sub-tenant of one other institution, made the choice to shut one thing that was sadly utterly out of our management.”
Among the many firm’s 11 outlets, no different Milk Bar areas have unionized. “In whole, there have been solely eight of us, and each single one in every of us gave an enthusiastic sure vote to unionize,” former worker Sarah McClune stated in an e mail. “We’re all genuinely shocked to see the influence that such a small crew can have and we actually respect everybody who’s reached out to share encouraging phrases.”
The Boston crew was following within the footsteps of many different espresso outlets and bakeries within the metropolis which have lately organized, together with impartial outlets just like the Somerville trio of Forge Baking Firm, Diesel Cafe, and Bloc Cafe, and native outposts of nationwide chains like Starbucks.