Should these workers have been fired?

[Hikergirl]

Yup. I also wouldn't be surprised to see a backlash against the businesses because they chose to fire the employees. The owners *can* fire them. And people *can* chose to eat elsewhere or hire a different contractor.

That said, I think it was pretty crappy of the cooks to not give the owner a heads-up so that he could have let everyone else know and either gotten some replacements for the day or closed the restaurant. It was also pretty naive of the owner not to pro-actively ask his employees about it, as it's been pretty big news.

I wouldn't call it naive. I would call it expecting your employees to be responsible, but I realize in this day and age that is asking too much of people.

FTR, it wasn't big news here, nobody was closed, and if they were it didn't even make the news. Oddly, we have a very large legal immigrant population here.

 

[luvsJack]

Can and should are very different questions with different answers in my book. The business owner is allowed to fire his or her employees, but the thing about karma is, well, we all know. Brick layers and line cooks will have new jobs in a matter of days so I doubt it matters to them, and if the jobs aren't plentiful where they live

Let's hope these two stalwart employers are only employing legal residents and are paying everybody above the table (and the guy saying he does so does not count), because those immigration violations can add up quickly and bankrupt a company pretty quickly.

You can turn that around though, brick layers are pretty common around here so at times there can be a shortage of jobs. And so are line cooks. Construction can be a pretty small world as can food service. So, a bad reference from a respected person in the field can bite hard. It could be the employees that meet Karma head on.

I don't blame either employer for firing. The Brick laying company has a job to do and when an entire crew doesn't show up it puts that job behind. That can result in a huge loss for the company.

A restaraunt can't run without cooks. One day can be a big loss for a restaraunt. A small business like that can't just decide to up and close one day. Any new customers that might have tried to come that day, won't come back. You lose business.

At the end of the day a business is about money and without loyal employees, you can't make the money because you can't do the work.

People "can" choose to eat elsewhere, but I would bet that there are enough on either side of that debate that it won't hurt as much as one may think.

 

[DizBelle]

Hm... let's see if this is allowed (because I really do want to respond to this statement, in some fashion).

There HAVE been threats.

There has not yet been action.

Certain people are justified in feeling "threatened" because they literally have been threatened. However, with luck and hard work, we can all hope nothing comes of the various threats that have been made.

Can you direct me to some sources that indicate that people that are in the US legally are being threatened? What, exactly, are they being threatened with?

 

[Magpie]

Can you direct me to some sources that indicate that people that are in the US legally are being threatened? What, exactly, are they being threatened with?

Nope, it's politics. Sorry. Check mainstream media sources, if you want.

 

[Colleen27]

Hm... let's see if this is allowed (because I really do want to respond to this statement, in some fashion).

There HAVE been threats.

There has not yet been action.

Certain people are justified in feeling "threatened" because they literally have been threatened. However, with luck and hard work, we can all hope nothing comes of the various threats that have been made.

And there has been action. Not in the direction commonly associated with "day without immigrants" protests, which tend to be heavily Hispanic, but just weeks ago other legal immigrants, even green card holders, were denied entry to our country. So it isn't as though the perceived threat is baseless.

Not to mention the "lesser" threat of losing a spouse, parents, or siblings to deportation, or the threat to the American-born children of undocumented immigrants of having to choose between moving with a deported parent or going into foster care to stay in the US.