PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — When regular customer Brandon Berkey showed up Tuesday morning at the OCF Coffee House on Fairmount Avenue to get his usual vanilla cortado, he was shocked to find the shop closed.
Philadelphia businessman and onetime City Council candidate Ori Feibush, had announced on Monday that he would close all OCF Coffee House locations — in Fairmount, Rittenhouse and Point Breeze — just about a week after workers at all three shops had announced their intent to unionize.
“It’s a shame that he is closing the store and all of these people are affected by it,” Berkey said.
On Tuesday, about three dozen workers from all three locations rallied outside the Fairmount shop in protest, angry that they had less than 24 hours’ notice of Feibush’s intent to close the stores. They accuse Feibush of union busting.
“We got an email saying that all three stores are going to be shut down effective immediately,” said Rexxi, who was a barista at the Rittenhouse location on South Street.
“And so we are demanding that Ori pay us severance, because he gave us absolutely no notice that this will be happening — and he displaced 34, 35 people.”
Feibush denies that he is union-busting, but he does cite the costs associated with employees organizing was a factor in his decision to close.
“That’s because of the administrative and legal costs associated with making sure that we remained on the up and up and that we responded correctly and properly,” Feibush said.
In the email to employees, he wrote, “Rising operational costs, reduced sales and the expiration of a couple of our leases this summer have made it difficult to continue operating the coffee shops, and the administrative and legal costs associated with your desire to organize has regrettably moved us beyond any cost that we could sustain.”
He says he called a meeting to discuss transitional information — like how long he could keep the locations open, and his intention to extend employee benefits for three months — but he says attendance was poor.
“The only people that showed up to have a conversation about the company were the managers,” said Feibush.
Meanwhile, the workers say they will do what they can to fight for themselves. “We are not discouraged,” said one. “And it’s not going to stop today. Like, we are going to keep fighting until we either get our jobs back, get severance or get some form of compensation for losing our jobs.”