NYC Butcher Fleisher’s Closed After Staff Walks Out Over BLM Sign Removal

Brooklyn-based “rockstar butcher” Fleisher’s has been forced to close its stores because dozens of workers reportedly walked off the job after the CEO removed Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ pride signs that employees had put in the storefront windows.

The company’s website says all of its locations, its two stores in New York City and two others in Connecticut, are “temporarily closed.”

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The beef between workers and management began last month, when Rob Rosania, a leading investor in the butcher, received a text from a pal in Westport, Conn. who was offended by BLM signs in the company’s local storefront {snip}

Rosania, a San Francisco-based real estate developer, reportedly called Fleisher’s CEO John Adams and told him to get rid of the signs.

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Fleisher’s workers told Forbes that Adams had joined the company with the promise of bringing accountability to the workforce of about 40, at least half of whom identify as BIPOC or non-binary or queer.

“I told him he failed at that,” said Ajani Thompson, 32, the only Black employee at the butcher’s store in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood {snip}“{snip} I don’t feel safe coming into work because you didn’t do that.”

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The worker walkout left Fleisher’s, which has established a reputation for high-end and pricey meats, unable to operate, and the nationwide labor shortage means it’s unlikely the company will be able to quickly replace its staff.

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