Pizzeria workers at the Sizzle Pie on Portland’s central eastside filed a petition in September 2024 for a union election. And on Jan. 9, they voted 16-0 to unionize with Restaurant Workers United. But by then, the union says, the company had changed attendance and discipline policies and fired three union organizers.
Sizzle Pie lawyers filed legal objections to the proposed bargaining unit, arguing that front-of-house workers shouldn’t be in the same unit as cooks and dishwashers, and that shift leads shouldn’t be in the union. That delayed the election. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rejected those arguments and scheduled an election including front-of-house, cooks, dishwashers, and shift leads at 624 E. Burnside St.
Winona Ruth, who goes by Ruthie, told the Labor Press she was fired Dec. 20, the day after the NLRB issued the order setting the election date, after more than three years at Sizzle Pie.
Management was well aware of who was involved with the union campaign: Workers had held rallies, testified in NLRB hearings, and delivered petitions to management.
Ruthie said after the union campaign went public, the company began requiring workers to submit apology letters for infractions like calling in sick on a scheduled shift or arriving late. Managers also started requiring workers to call them directly, rather than message through their scheduling app as they had done previously, if they couldn’t work their shift.
Kyran Lindsay, another union supporter, was fired on Nov. 13 after calling out sick. Lindsay said he was sent home for being sick by an on-duty manager and used the company’s scheduling app to notify the team when he was still sick the following two days. He didn’t call a manager, he said, because the usual manager was on vacation and he didn’t have the phone number for the person covering as manager.
Sizzle Pie Workers United has filed four unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB alleging that Sizzle Pie management targeted and retaliated against union supporters. The union is seeking to have the fired workers reinstated.
In the weeks before her firing, Ruthie posted in a company-wide message thread about her paycheck bouncing and another paycheck being delayed due to banking fraud holds. She also refused to count a bag of money for a manager because regular staff weren’t supposed to do so, she said. In a Dec. 14 email, the company’s human resources department told Ruthie to write a “commitment letter” outlining how she would maintain “a sense of professionalism and respect for management.”
In a response the following week, Ruthie wrote that she left recent meetings with management feeling confused and asked what she was specifically being disciplined for. She was fired later that day. Before December, she says she had never been reprimanded or disciplined by Sizzle Pie management.
Besides the East Burnside location, Sizzle Pie has six other pizza shops in Portland and Beaverton that aren’t unionized.
Sizzle Pie management did not respond to a request for comment. Sizzle Pie is owned by Sortis Holdings, a private equity fund that also owns Bamboo Sushi, Rudy’s Barbershop, and other Portland businesses. In recent years, Sortis has faced evictions, lawsuits over unpaid bills, and creditors seeking to force the company into bankruptcy.
“They seem to like to push the limits,” Ruthie said. “We know that they have it in them to grow this restaurant, to run this restaurant like a business, but they’re not …. We know they have the money to pay us what we’re worth. We just wanted to have a say in what happens to us at work.”
