NORTHAMPTON — Though Monday’s meeting of the City Council Committee on Community Resources was billed as a forum for downtown workers, restaurant owners showed to ask councilors to focus not on allegations of “wage theft” but on making downtown more welcoming.
“Let’s call it what it is. This is a witch hunt,” said Bob McGovern, the owner of Packard’s Bar on Masonic Street, who joined other restaurant owners in saying claims of worker mistreatment are overblown. McGovern and others said councilors should worry more about what city leaders can do to help businesses and their workers thrive.
McGovern called the proposed ordinance “blowback” from failed attempts last yearto unionize Hotel Northampton and warned that a broad restaurant unionization drive would be “the kiss of death.”
“I’ve never been so embarrassed by the City Council in all my years,” he said. “This is just a disguised attack on the city.”
Two members of the four-member City Council committee — Alisa Klein and Maureen Carney — have reacted to recent allegations of restaurant workers being underpaid by proposing a wage theft ordinance that would tie restaurant licenses to compliance with labor laws. The restaurant proprieters who spoke Monday said there’s little need for such an ordinance because they and most of their counterparts treat workers right.
“I’m really tired of all the disparagement,” said Christine Buchholz, an owner at Viva Fresh Pasta, adding that if councilors did more to address things like a lack of multi-hour parking downtown then more people would patronize their restaurants and they could pay workers more.
“It’s a sinking ship,” said Buchholz of the downtown business climate. “The pressure on restaurant owners is huge.”
Fitzwilly’s manager Frank Gohr called a wage theft ordinance “another duplication” that he deems unnecessary. Referring to the recently closed Zen Restaurant and allegations that workers there were mistreated, he said, “it’s terrible what happened to those people” — but it doesn’t reflect the broader reality of the downtown restaurant scene.
“Undocumented workers — they shouldn’t be hired to begin with,” he said. “Let’s enforce that law.”
Zen managers could not be reached for comment Monday.
At the start of Monday’s forum, Committee Chairwoman Gina-Louise Sciarra asked anyone who wanted to address the wage theft ordinance to put their comments in writing so that the full City Council could consider them while deliberating on the pending legislation later this summer.
“It’s important to the integrity of the process” for committee members to remain impartial, said Sciarra, emphasizing that the panel is only hearing testimony at this point and not deliberating. “Some had expressed concern about being treated impartially before the forums had even begun.”
Klein argued for allowing people to speak Monday, saying that the ordinance’s creation and the committee’s work in hearing from a variety of downtown stakeholders are not “mutually exclusive.”
In the end, those present spoke — a lot.
Restaurant workers and advocates echoed complaints expressed at previous forums, while business owners and managers asked councilors to consider affordable housing and public transportation that could make their employees’ lives easier.
Records from the state attorney general’s office show that Northampton restaurant workers have filed only a handful of complaints about being underpaid in recent years. But workers who spoke Monday said they are often afraid to stand up for themselves.
“Wage theft has certainly been an issue for me,” said one worker, Anders Warringer. “When I did (bring it up) it was really almost a fireable offense.”
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.