A Chipotle near Pennsylvania State University shut
down on Wednesday after managers reportedly quit over brutal work hours and
under-staffing.
A sign posted on the door to the eatery said that
most employees resigned in protest of their "borderline sweatshop
conditions." Below the message read: “People > profits.”
“Ask our corporate offices why their employees are
forced to work in borderline sweatshop conditions,” the sign read. “Almost the
entire management and crew have resigned.”
“Our Penn State restaurant was closed when a few
employees quit, locking out a majority of others who are enthusiastic to return
to work,” Chris Arnold, a spokesman for Chipotle, told The Huffington Post in
an email.
The managers who quit held the keys to open the
restaurant, Arnold said. He did not immediately respond to a question about the
number of workers that left, or how many remain.
A regional manager arrived early on Wednesday
afternoon to observe the situation and request that the managers remove the
sign from the door, according to Penn State’s student newspaper the Daily Collegian.
HuffPost called the State College, Penn. location of
Chipotle around 4 p.m. on Wednesday. When asked if the store had re-opened, a
man who identified himself as “Eric” over the phone referred HuffPost to
corporate public relations and hung up the phone.
Brian Healy, a former manager at the eatery, told
the student-run news site Onward State that the restaurant was understaffed,
forcing employees to work 10-12 hour shifts without breaks.
"Working conditions are heinous," he told
Onward State. "I'm not trying to take down the Chipotle corporation, I
just want to see people treated better."
The walkout comes just a week after fast-food
workers across the country protested for higher wages.
Hundreds were arrested.
Chipotle pays workers higher wages than many of its corporate
competitors, and it remains unclear whether the mass resignation at the Penn
State location was related to the strikes.
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