WESTON - It was a struggle for Kimberly Manteuffel to keep a restaurant up and running smoothly with only seven employees to schedule.
As an assistant manager at the Wendy's restaurant in Weston, Manteuffel sometimes had toschedule workers for 12-hour shifts, sometimes as manyas 14 days in a row. Some lunch shifts, she'd have only three employees cooking food and taking orders, when the standard is eight workers on the clock for the shift, she said.
Last Thursday,May 31, it reached a breaking point.
Manteuffel spoke with the store manager and other employees, tidied up the restaurant, put away the food, locked the door and hung a sign on the door thatread:
"Due to this corporation's refusal to pay a living wage and deal with problems before it's too late, the employees you would have dealt with today have all walked off the job. We wish you all the best. — Wendy's crew."
The employees didn't know what else to do to get the attention of the company's decision-makers, Manteuffel said. Seven workers,scheduled over the course of the day, refused to perform their jobs.
Their walkout caused the restaurant to be closed for all of Thursday, until Wendy's management scrambled to make other arrangements. In the days since, the workers have reached out to corporate leaders, had contact with local managers and made their case on social media.
They're asking that the restaurant management fix problems with the store, and they're hoping to bring attention to the conditions andthe low wages their work entailed.
Over the last six months, more than 30 employees at the Weston location have left their jobs at Wendy's, which pays $8 an hour, for higher paying jobsor jobs that offer advancement opportunities or raises, Manteuffel said. (Wendy's did not respond to requests for comment.)Often they left for jobs in other restaurants or in factories.
But they left behind vacancies that just weren't being filled by any new hires, Manteuffel said,leaving remaining employees to fill the gaps. Some of those remaining employees have developed problems with their backs, and a few ended up in the hospital with chest pains from the stress, Manteuffel said.
Local managers declined to comment for this story. USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin messages left withWendy's owner Starboard Group Management and with DavidRansbury, operator of the company, have not been returned.
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Isis Hunter, Manteuffel's19-year-old daughter, was hired a year ago. She was still a student at Wausau East High School, balancing not only school and homework, but also a 40- to 55-hour work week. She'd go to school, and then straight to work at 4 p.m., sometimes working until midnight or later. Then, she said, there was the miles-long walk hometo Wausauif she couldn't get a ride, which could take her up to an hour and a half.
"It really burned me out," Hunter said."And towardthe end of the semester, it got to the point whereI chose sleep instead of going to school."
On top of the scheduling, there were safety issues, employees said.
Nathan Brown, 18, who worked at the restaurant for about a year, said that on several occasions, a faulty chicken fryer has sprayed him with oil, resulting in a few tiny, circular marks visible on his forearms. Hunter, Brown and Manteuffel said the fryer wasn't the only safety concern at the restaurant, and that district and regional managers weren't responsive to their requests to fix the problems.
But the biggest problem for the employees was the pay. Most of the other businesses in the area, Manteuffel said, paid a higher starting wage with more opportunities for raises. At Wendy's the employees were told by the district and regional managers that they weren't getting raises due to performance, but were never given any feedback or reviews to show how they could improve, Hunter said.
Since the walkout, Manteuffel said the district manager has reached out to the team of employees, some of whomhave quit to take up other, higher paying jobs. In a text on Brown's phonefrom the districtmanager, she addresses the crew as the "Wendy's family," citing misunderstandings occurring between them.
"We know this sometimes happens among family members, however to clear up any misunderstandings we must be able to talk them out," reads the text, which Brown showed to a Wausau Daily Herald reporter.
The message, which appeared to comefrom the district manager, Lisa Joo, offers the employees a raise of $1 an hour. But Manteuffel is apprehensive, and said that in the past, it's taken months for raises to take effect, if they do at all. She and Brown want the promise in writing. Joo did not respond to a voicemail asking for a comment on the walkout.
Currently, the Wendy's store is open and operating, but the employees were brought in from Appleton and Oshkosh, and the district and regional managers are running the store, Manteuffel said. Manteuffel has not returned to work.
In the wake of the walkout, the group of employees from Wendy's has been contacted by other businesses, offering them jobs that will treat them better, Manteuffel said. And they've been contacted by thelabor advocacygroup Fight for $15, which lobbiesfor low-wage workers with a goal of seeing minimumwages raised to $15 an hour across the country.
Hunter, who graduated from Wausau East last month,is set to start a new factory job soon and said she isn't entertaining the idea of ever returning to the food industry. But she's glad to have participated in the walkout, and glad community members have seen the note on the door and asked questions.
"If we hadjust left and locked the door, they would have just done the same thing to a new group of people," she said.
