Could The End Of Foxtrot Lead To Better Alert Laws For Workers In Chicago?

By 10 a.m., he learned he no longer had a job.

Now, the Illinois Department of Labor has launched an investigation to determine if the companies violated the state's WARN Act, according to an agency statement. The act requires businesses of a certain size to give notice to employees who will be laid off, among other things.

Bladow was among hundreds of employees let go after 33 Foxtrot stores and two Dom's Kitchen & Market stores abruptly closed Tuesday, including locations in Dallas, Austin and Washington, D.C. The news sent shock waves across the city, with many taking to social media to express disdain for how company executives handled the closures.

The closures have prompted a class-action lawsuit and a complaint to the city. It has also raised questions about whether Chicago should create its own alert law for small businesses that shut down with no notice to employees.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges Outfox, the parent company of Foxtrot and Dom's, had 100 or more employees in Illinois, making it subject to the WARN Act, which legally requires a 60-day notice to employees of mass firings from businesses with at least 75 full-time employees. No closure notices for the company appear to have been made on the state's WARN report.

It's unknown how many full-time employees Outfox had in Illinois.

Bladow got his job at Dom's Kitchen & Market after graduating from the Silver Fork program. Provided by Center on Halsted, Silver Fork is an intensive, seven-week culinary crash course aimed at low-income LGBTQ+ Chicagoans, with an emphasis on job placement and certifications.

"I felt like I finally had my lucky break. I got accepted into a highly selective culinary arts program, I graduated, and I landed my dream job as a sushi chef," Bladow said. "After the decision to shut everything down, it felt like my dream had been ripped away from me.

"Today I feel like I'm in a waking nightmare, but the reality is my dream job is gone and I'm unemployed, thanks to white-collar money mismanagement."

It's not the first time Chicago workers have experienced such an abrupt closure. Last year, Rock Bottom Brewery Downtown laid off its entire staff overnight. In 2022, Pink Taco in River North laid off its entire staff after promising them their jobs would be safe during a company rebranding. Both businesses were too small to trigger the state's WARN Act.

The CHAAD Project, a grassroots hospitality advocacy organization, hopes this latest closure will push Chicago to create its own WARN Act to protect workers at small businesses from a last-minute layoff.

"Maybe not a 60-day notice like the WARN Act, but maybe a two-week notice that still allows employees to start filing for unemployment, preparing their resume," said Raeghn Draper, co-founder and director of communications for CHAAD. "It just gives people more of an opportunity to prepare."

Businesses close across Chicago all the time, but that doesn't mean workers shouldn't get advance notice, especially if the company knows ahead of time, Draper said.

Staff members from Foxtrot and Dom's Kitchen & Market told Block Club there were signs the company was in trouble.

Declan Rhodes, a shift leader at Foxtrot in the Gold Coast, said his location stopped receiving shipments of certain items last week. On Tuesday morning, his manager held a company-wide virtual meeting that had been rescheduled three times, Rhodes said.

"An hour before [my manager] had that meeting, he instructed myself and the other two or three team members on shift to stop selling gift cards … which I thought was a little odd," Rhodes said.

Bladow said he heard rumblings of a possible closure late Monday night. People working the night shift walked out, and Bladow received a warning text from a friend working that night, he said.

"I had no idea it would be the entire chain going down," Bladow said.

Bladow had not been working at the company long enough to be eligible for health care coverage. Rhodes said he's been told his health insurance will be discontinued at the end of the month. They are scheduled to get their final paychecks on Friday, they told Block Club.

"It all happened so fast. It felt so surreal. … It was traumatic. You were given an hour and a half to pack up your stuff and you're unemployed," Rhodes said.

CHAAD has been working to connect workers with resources such as mutual aid and mental health professionals. The group is also putting together a list of small businesses that are hiring.

"This was months in the making. They could have allowed people more of a leeway in terms of off-boarding people. … The fact that they were putting people in a financial crisis wasn't important," Draper said. "Many of us live paycheck to paycheck. … We'd love to see our city not take this as a one-off situation but as a serious crisis … and maybe start working on implementing some policy on a local level that would hold businesses accountable."

Legislation regarding workplace regulations would likely start in Chicago's Committee on Workforce Development. Committee chair Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd) told Block Club he's willing to hear ideas about potential legislation and is interested in seeing if any of his colleagues would "jump on board."

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), another workforce development committee member, said enacting a local WARN Act in Chicago is a "fair conversation to have" and he wants to hear Rodriguez's thoughts.

"We've seen obviously on a large scale what happens when folks find out the same day that they're no longer working anywhere, which is not how anybody should be treated," Vasquez said.

Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, enacted its own WARN Act in 1985. It requires businesses with 50 or more employees to alert the Philadelphia director of Commerce if they plan to close.

Even if Outfox didn't meet the threshold for the state's WARN Act, a local policy is worth considering, said Dan Schneider, senior staff attorney at Legal Action Chicago.

"You'd be talking about a situation where you have multiple stores across one city with hundreds of employees shutting down simultaneously and no notice to anybody — the kind of situation that state and federal WARN acts were asked to address," Schneider said. "I think it's absolutely worth looking at."

Schneider, who provides free civil legal services to people living in poverty, agreed with Rhodes that small businesses would likely need a narrower window for alerting workers.

"Small businesses do fail. It does happen not irregularly, and it doesn't mean that employers shouldn't be encouraged to give notice. But I could see them making an argument that, especially when you're dealing with a much smaller business, sometimes it's just not practical or feasible," Schneider said.

While Draper agrees that not all businesses know ahead of time that they are closing, many do and there are more ethical approaches that can be taken, they said. For example, Orkenoy, a small restaurant in Humboldt Park, is going out of business but has given all their employees a two-week notice. The restaurant is also having an "off-boarding party" where customers can come and tip their workers one last time.

"You can't always do things perfectly, but we think that's a good example of how you can at least give people a heads up," Draper said.

Laid-off Foxtrot and Dom's Kitchen workers can seek assistance and resources from the state, which has created a site with information to help them.

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