An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

More than 10 work­ers at Trad­er Jack’s Restau­rant at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain, have been placed on tem­po­rary lay­off as the busi­ness con­fronts a dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial pe­ri­od.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er Ryan Achim con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day af­ter a town hall meet­ing was held with staff to ex­plain the com­pa­ny’s po­si­tion and mea­sures be­ing tak­en.

Achim ex­plained that sales had de­clined com­pared with the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year, while ex­pens­es in­clud­ing rent and pur­chas­ing costs had in­creased.

Man­age­ment had al­ready tak­en steps to re­duce costs and rene­go­ti­ate arrange­ments with sup­pli­ers. Those mea­sures pro­vid­ed some ini­tial re­lief but were not enough to ease the fi­nan­cial bur­den.

Achim not­ed that man­age­ment ul­ti­mate­ly de­cid­ed the is­sues had to be ad­dressed in­ter­nal­ly, lead­ing to the tem­po­rary lay­off of work­ers.

He stressed that the mea­sure does not amount to ter­mi­na­tion or re­trench­ment.

Work­ers were in­formed that they re­main em­ployed by Trad­er Jack’s dur­ing the tem­po­rary lay­off and could be re­called if cir­cum­stances im­prove.

The com­pa­ny’s memo, which was dat­ed and sent to af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day, states that the lay­offs take ef­fect from to­day for three months with­out pay.

The memo ex­plained that the down­turn re­sult­ed in re­duced op­er­a­tions and sur­plus labour.

Servers were among those af­fect­ed, with their po­si­tions deemed sur­plus to cur­rent op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments. Man­age­ment al­so ex­plored suit­able al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment with­in the busi­ness, but none was avail­able.

The memo states that the last in, first out (LI­FO) prin­ci­ple was used as the se­lec­tion cri­te­ri­on for the tem­po­rary lay­off ex­er­cise.

One af­fect­ed work­er, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, ex­pressed con­cern about the loss of in­come dur­ing the tem­po­rary pe­ri­od. The work­er in­di­cat­ed that they were hop­ing the restau­rant’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion would im­prove and that they could re­turn be­fore the three-month pe­ri­od end­ed. The work­er al­so said many things need to be cleared up by man­age­ment as well, and they will be seek­ing ad­vice.

Achim ex­plained that the tem­po­rary lay­off forms part of a re­duced scal­ing of op­er­a­tions. He al­so dis­closed that the restau­rant would be closed for nor­mal busi­ness while man­age­ment works to re­solve the fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties.

In De­cem­ber 2022, the Achim fam­i­ly took over Trad­er Jack’s at Movi­eTowne and un­der­took ren­o­va­tions to the restau­rant. Fam­i­ly mem­bers had pre­vi­ous­ly owned J Mal­one’s, which closed its doors dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.