Dallas’ Response to “Day Without Immigrants”
So far, the Dallas Business Journal has up the one of the better pieces on today’s “Day Without Immigrants,” protest. Though it was related mainly to the food service (it sounds like terrible “institutional racism,” but I guess it is a fair area of commerce to focus on, given the number of Hispanics and Latinos employed in food service in Dallas) industry’s response in the city, it showed just how differently some businesses handled the day:
Locally, employers in the restaurant community handled the day differently, but those who actively “communicated” with Hispanic employees said that there have been few or no disruptions to their operations.
Some restaurateurs planned early on to make accommodations for employees who wanted to show their support for immigration rights. Other employers asked workers to sign documents that said today’s no-shows would be fired, according to restaurant owners.
Paging 1st Amendment Lawyers: Is that not a violation of one’s constitutional rights? It just seems terrible to ask workers to sign a document saying that if they didn’t show today, they’d be fired. Terrible!
On the other hand, there were some good things going on:
Still others are showing their support in creative ways. Some Hispanic restaurant operators are closing for half the day. In Uptown Dallas, Mattito’s Tex Mex restaurant is giving free meals to Hispanic customers and employees.
Tom Landis, president of Dallas-based Nodak Restaurant Group which has Pizza Patrón and Texadelphia franchisees, said that he gave notice to Pizza Patrón customers — mainly Hispanic — that his four area stores would be closed on May 1.
Landis figured that, today, many Hispanic-oriented shopping centers where Pizza Patrons are located would be deserted.
“We wanted to align ourselves with our Hispanic customers,” he said.
He decided to keep his Texadelphia stores open since they expected brisk catering business today. These stores were closed during the April 11 rally in downtown Dallas.
For Landis, communication was key to smooth business operations.
I’ve never been to any of those places, but you can bet that, next time I’m in Dallas and looking for a place to eat, I’m going to track one down. I’m sure the purchase of one meal won’t do much to help their business, but it would show I support the fact that they handled things in a fair manner.
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(On May 1st, 2006 at 8:49 pm)
Just an FYI: the First Amendment applies only to government (state or federal) action. There might be other laws that protect the political speech of workers (I never took First Amendment or Labor Law in school so I have no idea), but I don’t think the First Amendment would be any help here.