Seattle restaurant manager fired after workers attend rally

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, May 2, 2006

SEATTLE – When the 17 employees of Cafe Septieme, including 10 Hispanics, asked for Monday off to participate in an immigration rights march and rally, manager Vance Wolfe scheduled no one to work.

Wolfe reasoned that the owner, Victor Santiago, “couldn’t fire the entire staff.” Nor did he. The only one fired by Santiago was Wolfe.

“He made no schedule at all,” Santiago said, sitting in his other restaurant, La Cocina Santiago, a block away in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. “Why would I want him in a job like this?”

Wolfe, who is white, had worked for Santiago for nearly four years and was promoted from waiter to manager when the boss took over Cafe Septieme 1 1/2 years ago. He said Santiago had threatened to fire anyone who didn’t report for work but promised to pay extra to those who did.

He informed Santiago of his scheduling decision Saturday night.

“He pretty much fired me for supporting the staff and not supporting him,” Wolfe said while walking to the start of the march at 3:30 p.m.

At La Cocina, where about a third of the employees are Santiago’s relatives, no one scheduled to work Monday asked for the day off, the owner said.

“I’m Latino. I’m Hispanic,” he said. “Of course I support everything that’s going on (with the demonstration), but I’m a businessman. In a way, I’m in the middle.”

Wolfe’s co-workers offered to resign en masse if that would get him rehired, but Wolfe refused.

“I couldn’t be prouder of them,” he said.

Amanda Zumwalt, a bartender and server, said Wolfe was the best manager she’d had in 13 years of restaurant work.

“He kind of took one for the whole team,” Zumwalt said.

Santiago said he might have made accommodations if the issue had been presented to him early enough to revise the work schedule to keep the restaurant open at least part of the day.

Jeremy Bang, a waiter, said employees had advised the owner as early as several weeks ago that it was possible no one would come to work Monday, but were told, “that’s absolutely not going to happen,” and after further discussion were warned not to raise the subject again.