Struggle for Migrant Worker Rights at Colony Capital-owned French Fast Food Chain
Since 2005, the French-based fast food chain Buffalo Grill, with some 300 restaurants in France, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, employing over 6,000 workers has been owned by the US-based Colony Capital.
Colony Capital is a major employer in the IUF sectors through its ownership of, among other properties, the Fairmont/Raffles and Kerzner hotel and resort chains. Colony Capital has also taken a strategic stake in the Accor hotel and services group.
Buffalo Grill sales declined following the 2003 French judicial proceedings against management for allegedly violating the embargo on banned UK beef iimports during the 1996-2000 phase of the mad cow disease crisis, but sales have since recovered. In June, workers, with trade union support, began occupying one of the units in Viry-Chatillon, in the South of Paris, in response to repression instigated by management against undocumented workers who supported a migrant running as a union candidate in workplace elections. Revelations in the French press have documented a conscious practice by Buffalo Grill management of hiring undocumented immigrant workers in order to exploit their vulnerable situation. More information on the union struggle is available here on the IUF web site