In the past 10 days, Texas employees at smoothie shop JuiceLand have battled with Austin-based company executives over wages, allegations of racism, and requests for better working conditions.
After more than a week of restaurant closures in several cities due to worker strikes, one of the 30 shops remains closed today — the store in the Sylvan Thirty development in West Dallas. It has been closed since May 15 and is expected to reopen tomorrow, May 25, according to a JuiceLand spokeswoman.
A second JuiceLand in North Texas, on Lovers Lane near Inwood Road in Dallas, did not close but has been short-staffed during the strikes.
Of the company’s 543 employees, 28 remain on strike and will not be paid for the hours they did not work. About 50 protesters have returned to work, the company spokeswoman reports.
One of the core complaints was over low wages. In response, JuiceLand founder Matt Shook, Director of Human Resources Jennifer Cupid and their team announced that employees’ wages were raised to $15 per hour for tipped employees and $17 per hour for non-tipped commissary employees.
The wage increase will be effective as of May 15, says a spokeswoman, and it affects most of JuiceLand’s employees. Across the company, 91% of the employees are hourly workers.
But the wage increase isn’t enough, the strikers say.
“$15 is barely a sustainable living. It is a company’s responsibility to pay its employees a livable wage,” reads the post from the United Front of Juice Crews Instagram page, which shares information from the strikers’ negotiations.
Several JuiceLand employees in North Texas would not speak to The Dallas Morning News last week, saying they were worried they’d lose their jobs. Brett Rummel, a Hutchins resident and former assistant manager at the JuiceLand at Sylvan Thirty, talked to The Dallas Morning News after he quit his job. His last day was May 15.
“I didn’t think things were going to change,” he says of the job he held since late March 2021. Rummel believes he was underpaid at $12.50 an hour and says the working conditions were challenging.
“We had people coming in, working 6 or 7 days a week, because we were so short-staffed,” he says.
Across the United States, some restaurant workers have expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs, and Texas businessowners are having trouble hiring new employees. Some restaurant owners are offering incentives like sign-on bonuses to lure new workers. Many have struggled to keep existing chefs employed, after it’s become common for strong workers to get “poached” by other restaurants who are short-staffed.
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JuiceLand’s strikers say low pay isn’t their only concern. “JuiceLand has continued to silence its brown and Black voices as well as women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community,” a group of protesters wrote in a statement. “The higher-ups have continuously refused to take accountability for their part in upholding a racist and sexist structure that ultimately aids in company-wide oppression. We will not tolerate the exploitation of the voices who have carried the business on their backs for so long.”
JuiceLand says in a statement that it hired a diversity, equity and inclusion firm in 2019 and started finalizing its strategic plan in March 2021, which includes anti-discrimination and harassment training.
“From the day we were a single juice shop on Barton Springs, we’ve been committed to creating a great place to work. We believe in treating people fairly and with dignity, providing them safe and healthy working conditions, and good wages and benefits. Those remain our values today,” the leadership team wrote in a company letter to employees.
Last week’s discussions ended with a canceled meeting May 21. Executives from JuiceLand wrote in a memo that “the meeting is unlikely to serve any purpose” and called it off.
It’s unclear what next steps will be between the executive team and the remaining strikers. A GoFundMe page was started for the protesters.
Company executives added in a statement: “Strikers are still our employees, and we encourage them to let us know when they are ready to return to work. If their positions are open, then they will be able to get back to work immediately. If their role has been filled with a permanent replacement, then they will go on a list and be the first to be called when their position comes available.”
For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.
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