Leister’s dis­missal is of a piece with the franchisee’s larg­er effort to push back against the union cam­paign, some­times using tac­tics that appear to vio­late labor law, says Issac Dal­to, also a Jim­my John’s deliv­ery dri­ver and union sup­port­er. Since going pub­lic with their orga­niz­ing effort last year , Dal­to says, the local fran­chise own­ers fired anoth­er promi­nent union sup­port­er, dis­trib­uted anti-union mate­ri­als in work­er pay­checks and hired a local anti-union law firm to con­test sep­a­rate unfair labor prac­tice charges filed at the NLRB by the union last August.

Deliv­ery dri­ver Bren­nan Leis­ter says he was fired Jan. 23 at the Jim­my John’s loca­tion in down­town Baltimore’s tourist dis­trict. The rea­son cit­ed by the man­ag­er was an infrac­tion of the rules gov­ern­ing clock­ing out for breaks. But the ​“real rea­son,” Leis­ter charges, is that he is an active and vocal union sup­port­er. He says he is like­ly to file an unfair labor prac­tice com­plaint with the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB) over the fir­ing, but that he intends to con­tin­ue to agi­tate for the union whether he is re-hired or not.

Fran­chise oper­a­tors at Jim­my John’s Gourmet Sand­wich­es in Bal­ti­more are prov­ing true to the nation­al chain’s anti-union rep­u­ta­tion with an aggres­sive counter-attack against local labor orga­niz­ing, includ­ing a deci­sion in late Jan­u­ary to fire an out­spo­ken union sup­port­er, say advo­cates for the Jim­my John’s Work­ers Union, an affil­i­ate of the rad­i­cal union Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World.

Those charges are now tied up in NLRB delays as the fran­chisees chal­lenge the Board’s sub­poe­na of com­pa­ny employ­ment records, Dal­to reports. Appear­ing on NLRB doc­u­ments as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jim­my John’s fran­chisees Daniel Dorch and Michael Gilette is Kevin McCormick, a lawyer with the firm White­ford Tay­lor Pre­ston. The firm’s own web­site states it han­dles ​“union orga­ni­za­tion­al avoid­ance” for busi­ness­es of all kinds.

Three tele­phone calls to McCormick seek­ing com­ment were not returned. Sim­i­lar e‑mail requests were ignored.

The dis­missal of Leis­ter prompt­ed a street demon­stra­tion on his behalf by union sup­port­ers Jan­u­ary 31. Held in front of the Jim­my John’s down­town Bal­ti­more loca­tion (near to the entrance of the Cam­den Yards base­ball sta­di­um), the demon­stra­tion saw about 25 union back­ers march on an infor­ma­tion­al pick­et line as thou­sands of sports fans streamed by on their way to a ​“Fan­Fest” cel­e­bra­tion for the Bal­ti­more Ori­oles base­ball team. Fans also packed the Jim­my John’s restau­rant, as mem­bers of the local police depart­ment kept a close eye on the demonstrators.

Demand­ing that Leis­ter be re-hired, the demon­stra­tors also protest­ed the low wages at the sand­wich shop. Leis­ter empha­sized the point by telling In These Times that he had been hired at a wage $7.25 an hour in June 2013 and had not received an increase until this year, when state min­i­mum wage law man­dat­ed an increase. He esti­mates that income from tips upped his hourly income to about $10 an hour, but that the cost of main­te­nance and repair of his per­son­al bicy­cle can­celled most of the addi­tion­al tip income. Dri­vers were pro­vid­ed with com­pa­ny-owned bikes when he start­ed at Jim­my John’s in 2013, he says, but the vehi­cles were tak­en away and dri­vers required to sup­ply their own bikes thereafter.

These kinds of wages are typ­i­cal at the more than 2,000 Jim­my John’s restau­rants around the coun­try, Dal­to adds, and spurred a high­ly pub­li­cized effort estab­lish a union at for the company’s work­ers in the Min­neapo­lis-St. Paul area in 2010. The effort was defeat­ed, Dal­to says, using the same tac­tics now being employed by the Bal­ti­more franchisees.

The IWW cam­paign in Bal­ti­more emerged into pub­lic view last year just as the fast food strikes began grab­bing nation­al head­lines. Although there is no for­mal con­nec­tion between the Bal­ti­more orga­niz­ers and the IWW’s nation­al cam­paign to orga­nize low-wage ser­vice sec­tor work­ers — which also include a long-run­ning Star­bucks orga­niz­ing cam­paign—and the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU)-led Fight for 15 cam­paign, both groups have stressed the need to boost the chron­ic low pay of fast-food work­ers and to intro­duce oth­er work­place improvements.

Leis­ter says that his dis­missal was an attempt to intim­i­date oth­er work­ers who may con­sid­er sup­port­ing the union: ​“They want to cre­ate a cli­mate of fear. The fast-food indus­try depends on work­ing moth­ers and oth­er income work­ers who can’t afford to lose a pay­check. They want you to fear the man­age­ment, to fear the boss.”