Stand with Sweet Pea Cafe Staff: Financial Aid Needed

Hi there!

This fundraiser is for the sole purpose of supporting current Sweet Pea Cafe employees, as the future of the cafe is currently unknown. Funds will go directly to employees that unfortunately will be impacted financially by the legal ramifications of the owners’ committing wage fraud. Funds will go toward rent, bills and food expenses while these employees look for new jobs.

Employees of Sweet Pea Cafe are some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to know. They are also impacted by poverty deeply and the illegal financial practices by ownership have just exacerbated this poverty even more. They do not all have the luxury of walking out or otherwise leaving Sweet Pea without a backup job, or money saved.

Please help me carry them through this uncertain time!

WORKER POWER FOREVER

Details:

On Saturday, November 23, one of the owners of Sweet Pea Cafe was held accountable by an employee who asked for wage transparency after a pattern of financial negligence by management. They noticed that since the federal minimum wage change in effect on September 30th, their wages were being misrepresented on the company payroll program. The payroll program showed that employees had been paid $10/hr through October, but when a paper copy of said employee’s paycheck was compared for the same pay period, the paper copy showed that the wage being paid until October 28th was still $9/hr.

This employee also pointed out to

the owner that the hourly wage going back to their start date (July 2024) was adjusted to $10/hr when they had been paid $9/hr since starting work there.

On Sunday, November 24th, the employee was sent an email terminating their employment, given the reason of their “hostile and confrontational actions toward management”. In the same email, the owner confirmed that all employees will be receiving “the wages in question” from September 30-October 28.

After the retaliatory firing of the above employee, a statement was posted publically by employees to the public business Instagram, in an attempt to expose to the community the harmful environment we’d been forced to work in.

The owners promptly took the post down, and deleted all social media, again attempting to escape public accountability.

The owners of the cafe regularly engaged in negligence and financial mistreatment of their employees for a period of two years. Corroborated stories from current and past employees describe held checks, checks bouncing, late paychecks, and missed wages.

Current and previous employees of other businesses owned by them (Hair on Earth, Olde Fields Clothing) have documented in detail how the owners refused to pay them, actively stole money from them, engaged in suspicious financial practices while taking no accountability for doing so.

We hope this will be the end of mistreatment of workers throughout Tallahassee by Holly & William Gallotti.