Hunger Strike, Strike, Pressure on Workers: Protest by Workers at Moscow Restaurant Chain Grows
Novoprof
February 3, 2017

Workers at the fastfood chain Pizzeria (formerly known as Sbarro) who have not been paid continued their hunger strike for the third day in a restaurant on Krasnoprudnaya Street in Moscow. All the tricks played by the “strange” management to make the workers flinch and stop their protest have failed.

Other restaurants in the chain have joined the protest of their comrades on Krasnoprudnaya. Workers at Pizzeria in the Vegas Shopping Center on Kashirka have not worked for three days since joining the trade union. Novoprof has taken calls from a number of other restaurants in the chain, as well as from restaurants in the Yolki-Palki chain.

The workers are desperate because they do not know how to get their hard-earned money. They have been kicked out of rented flats and have no way to pay back their debts, and there is no one and nowhere they can borrow any more money.

Instead of doing everything they can to pay the money they owe their workers, the real employers have been hiding behind “strange” managers. Practically speaking, there is no one with whom workers can negotiate. Trade union members suspect the Yelashvili brothers (Murab and Georgy) are still the actual proprietors of the chains. Instead of solving the problems that have arisen at the restaurants, management has attempted to divide workers by paying out tiny sums on their bankcards, but not everyone’s. They have been trying to throw them a bone, as it were, thus making the workers shut up and return to work.  There have also been attempts to mentally coerce the workers who are on hunger strike.

We have found out that the former Sbarro, Yolki-Palki, YamKee, and other chains have been re-registered as new legal entities with names like Italian Eatery, Ltd., One-Stop Service, Ltd., and so on. These legal entities have different executive directors, but surprisingly they have the same official address. They do not have their own websites. Similarly, we have been unable to find a website for Rus RST Holding Company, which, allegedly, had taken over management of the restaurants from the Yelashvili-owned G.M.R. Planet of Hospitality.*

Novoprof will continue to support the protesting workers with all their their might, uniting them in the fight for their hard-earned money.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks again to Comrade Ivan Ovsyannikov for the heads-up. Novoprof is short for the New Trade Unions Interregional Trade Union. It was founded in 2011 by brewers from the Baltica plant in Rostov-on-Don, and printers and heating plant workers in Petersburg. Photos courtesy of Ivan Ovsyannikov and Novoprof

* Merab Yelashvili

Born in the Georgian village of Kulashi in 1974 to the family of a Georgian Jewish community leader. At the age of 19, he came to conquer Moscow, where, with his brother Georgy Yelashvili and brother-in-law Roman Shamilashvili, he founded GMR, which distributes products by leading European producers, in particular, Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs. He then moved into real estate. In 1997, he persuaded American franchisors to give him a master franchising agreement to open Sbarro pizzerias in Russia. Since 2007, he has been president of the company G.M.R. Planet of Hospitality. 

In September 2008, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, he and his relatives opened a Sephardic synagogue in the Triumph Palace residential complex in the north of Moscow. In April 2016, Yelashvili set tongues wagging when he organized the wedding of his eldest daughter Anna in Tel Aviv. The two thousand guests who attended the festivities were entertained by Nikolay Baskov, Soso Pavliashvili, and American rapper Ryan Leslie. A year earlier, Merab’s brother and business partner Georgy had celebrated the wedding of his son in the Moscow Manege, inviting over one and a half thousand people.

Source: RBC