Immigration protest left eatery’s workers in a bind, owner says

If 12 employees had told him in advance that they’d be participating in the “Day Without Immigrants,” the owner who fired them says he would have closed his business that day and protested alongside them.

Bill McAnally, owner of the I Don’t Care Bar and Grill in Catoosa, said he fired the 12 employees after they didn’t show up for work last Thursday with no notice.

“They didn’t call in; they didn’t show up,” McAnally said. “They put 38 other employees in a bind.”

The “Day Without Immigrants” movement took place Thursday in Tulsa and across the United States. The movement encouraged immigrants to stay home from work and not purchase anything to show what an integral part of U.S. society they are.

McAnally said that had they told him, he would have “shut the restaurant down and protested with them.”

Francisco Trevino, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Tulsa Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the business owner’s decision to fire the employees was an overreaction.

Trevino said he is supportive of a business’ rights to fire employees but that he thought a lesser reprimand would have been sufficient in this case.

“I don’t think you’re going to see a whole lot of Hispanics patronize that business now,” Trevino said of the bar and grill.

McAnally said that, to the contrary, business is booming.

Trevino also criticized the protest as being too loosely organized in Tulsa.

“The idea is good — to show the U.S. that the immigrant community is important,” Trevino said. But “by being better organized, I think Hispanic workers would have been better protected from termination.”