Eat the tourists

Seems like we every few months another one of these stories comes along.

By the end, some of Altamura's staff were accepting less pay and delaying paycheck deposits in an effort to keep the restaurant going.

Altamura closed at the end of July, just shy of a year from its debut last summer. Employees like Risbourg said they received scant advance notice, lost out on pay and never got answers to their complaints from the restaurant's owner, Jack Petronella.

“We found out three days before the restaurant closed, and when I deposited my last paycheck, it bounced,” she said.

About a week later, on Aug. 7, Altamura’s one-time sibling business, the bakery and café ManhattanJack, also closed, though there was talk of rebooting the popular Uptown spot. ManhattanJack employees too report not receiving their final paychecks.

A lot of people depend on these kinds of service jobs in New Orleans. The restaurant industry is scarcely organized and offers little in the way of benefits or job security. But it does account for over a third of the new jobs created here since 2010. In other words, our largest and fastest growing industry doesn't support our workforce very well. That's going to have to change or else we should find something else to live off of.