Visitors to Disney Springs and the Japanese restaurant Morimoto Asia were met with a spontaneous flyering event on Monday, organized by the labor union UNITE HERE Local 737, which represents thousands of theme park and hotel workers employed by Disney World.
The labor action, highlighting what the union declares a wrongful firing by Morimoto Asia’s parent company — the Patina Restaurant Group — was organized just ahead of the restaurant’s annual Ramen Rumble event Monday evening.
The goal? To get Ramen Rumble attendees on their side as part of a pressure campaign to get the Patina Restaurant Group to rehire Julie Ruiz, a former server at Pizza Ponte in Disney Springs, who was fired in October after speaking up about alleged sexual harassment by a supervisor.
Pizza Ponte is also owned by the Patina Restaurant Group, a Disney contractor that operates several eateries on Disney property, including Maria & Enzo’s, The Edison and Enzo’s Hideaway.
The official reason the 23-year-old server was suspended, then fired, was for walking into work with an earbud in, according to Ruiz. She and the union have called foul.
Ruiz, who is basically homeless — sleeping on a friend’s couch for roughly $400 a month — has also been a public leader in an ongoing unionization drive among workers of at least five Patina-owned restaurants on the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment plaza property near Orlando.
“My supervisor wasn’t fired for sexual harassment, but one week after I passed out these [pro-union] flyers, I was fired for wearing an earbud,” Ruiz shared last year. “I’m not going to accept this treatment. I’m going to fight for myself and the women who work at Disney Springs.”
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The union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Patina of unlawful retaliation against Ruiz in November. A hearing for her case by an agency likely to become more hostile to labor under the Trump administration is yet to be scheduled.
Faiyaz Kara, a restaurant critic and contributor for Orlando Weekly, told us that he didn’t notice any disruption during the 8-10 p.m. segment of the Ramen Rumble event Monday night.
However, the union shared photos of several attendees wearing “Justice for Julie” stickers inside the restaurant during an earlier 5:30-7:30 p.m. slot for the ticketed event. The event, held annually and hosted by Morimoto Asia, this year highlighted the culinary skills of Orlando-area chefs from eateries including Wa Ramen, Red Panda Noodle, Norigami and The Monroe.
‘Sexual harassment is not okay’
Just outside Disney Springs property on Monday, where union reps wouldn’t run the risk of being run out by security, Ruiz told Orlando Weekly that the flyering was just as much a push to raise awareness of sexual harassment in the service industry as a protest of her being fired under dubious circumstances.
She, and other representatives of the union, passed out “Justice for Julie” stickers for Disney Springs visitors and Ramen Rumble attendees to wear.
“Sexual harassment is not OK,” Ruiz told Orlando Weekly, with the conviction of someone standing 10 feet tall.
And yet, in the restaurant industry, it’s all too common. A 2018 study by the Harvard Business Review found that as many as 90 percent of women and 70 percent of men in the restaurant industry report experiencing some form of sexual harassment on the job.
Women make up a majority of restaurant servers, and face pressure on the job to make sure customers — and their managers with hiring and firing power — feel comfortable and content. The pressure to make ends meet can also make servers more susceptible to experiencing sexual harassment and staying quiet about it.
One report from 2014 found that female servers in states with a subminimum wage system where they relied on tips were twice as likely to experience sexual harassment on the job than those in states that had eliminated their subminimum or tipped wage systems.
Ruiz wasn’t the only server at Pizza Ponte who had a negative experience with this supervisor, whose name the union has declined to share with press on the record. Another young woman, who also worked temporarily at Pizza Ponte and is also active in an ongoing unionization effort at Disney Springs, said she felt uncomfortable around this supervisor and was the first to go to HR to report his behavior.
“He told me that I was beautiful and that I had pretty eyes,” Joli Lindsay, a server at one of the Patina Restaurant Group’s other restaurants, said in October. “While I was working, he asked another co-worker ‘what birth control she uses.’ I was outraged by this harassment, and I reported him to management.”
Management interviewed her, Ruiz, and some of their other co-workers, Lindsay continued. “We told the truth about the harassment, but the next day, he was back at work,” she said.
Neither the Patina Restaurant Group, nor the company that owns a majority share in the PRG — Delaware North — have responded to multiple requests for comment from Orlando Weekly about the alleged harassment or Ruiz’s firing.
“He wasn’t fired for this harassment,” Lindsay said of the supervisor. “But now Julie, who spoke out about the harassment, is fired for having an earbud in. We’re calling on Patina Restaurant Group to bring Julie back to work and to agree to a fair process to organize the union.”
Bringing in new allies
Workers at five restaurants at Disney Springs, owned by the PRG, first announced an organizing drive last April with UNITE HERE Local 737, a hospitality union that represents about 18,000 workers employed directly by the Walt Disney Company.
Ruiz’s former place of employment, and many other restaurants and eateries at Disney Springs, aren’t officially owned and operated by Disney — but are instead operated by contractors like PRG that enter into agreements with Disney.
This leaves workers at those establishments outside the union benefits and protections that Disney World employees receive through their representation by one of a half-dozen labor unions that have a presence at the multibillion-dollar theme park complex.
Workers like Ruiz and Morimoto Asia chef Sabrina Redditt, in launching their effort to organize, have highlighted their “second class” status on Disney property as an impetus for forming a union. They say they earn lower wages and receive fewer or worse job benefits compared to workers in similar jobs working just yards away at Disney-owned establishments.
“I’m proud of my work, but I make just $18 an hour,” said Redditt, who makes several dollars less than a unionized Disney World employee in the same job position. “I can’t afford health insurance. My kids are on Medicaid, and I have a tooth cavity I can’t fix. I asked for a raise, and they offered me a six-day workweek instead. I shouldn’t have to choose between surviving and seeing my family.”
Several prominent Democrats in the Orlando area have come out publicly in support of the organizing effort and Ruiz, following news of her firing. State Rep. Anna Eskamani — who recently launched a bid for Orlando mayor — has been one of the most visible supporters.
“I’m really just here to make sure that the Patina Group knows that our workers have the support of their elected officials here in Orlando, and that they’re not standing alone,” Eskamani shared at a press conference organized after Ruiz’s firing.
“Think about all the other women across this country, or the women across Orlando who work in the tourism industry but don’t have this type of support, how isolating and scary that is,” said Eskamani, surrounded by a group of Disney and Disney Springs workers who showed up to support Ruiz.
“I find a sense of hope in this room as difficult as these stories are, and I know that with the help of a union, with the support of a fair process by Patina Restaurant Group, that we will be able to get Julie back her job,” she continued. “And we’re also going to build a world where no one is going to have to even experience this without a pathway for accountability and justice.”
Representatives of local faith-based and labor advocacy groups, members of the Orange County Democrats, state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Orange County Commissioner Kelly Semrad also joined Disney Springs workers for their organizing campaign launch last April.
Ruiz recently met with U.S. Congressman Darren Soto, along with other union reps and PRG employees at Disney Springs. Delaware North, a multinational service and hospitality company that essentially owns PRG, is a federal contractor — meaning, the company receives federal taxpayer funds to serve various government entities, including food service operations at the Orlando International Airport.
A group of Delaware North workers there, who unionized with UNITE HERE Local 362 a few years ago, recently approved a new union contract — an agreement they secured with the company only after a strike threat. Eric Clinton, a former Disney employee and longtime president of Local 362, told Orlando Weekly in a text that the new contract includes annual raises, lower healthcare costs and a pension plan for workers — something he described as a “massive win.”
Roughly 6 percent of Florida’s workforce is unionized, according to new union membership data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Tuesday, compared to 9.9 percent nationwide.
In the restaurant and service industries, unions are even less common, with factors such as high turnover serving as barriers to organizing.
Although the union’s stunt at Ramen Rumble did little to disrupt the event, the union plans to continue its call for PRG to rehire Ruiz and to allow for workers to organize a union with their co-workers without facing intimidation tactics.
Ruiz moved to Orlando from Arizona after finishing high school in Mexico, where she grew up. Although she has friends here, Ruiz is financially independent, with no family nearby. She relies only on herself, and a temporary job she has with the union, to make ends meet.
“I moved from Mexico to here for a better life,” she told Orlando Weekly. “I just moved here for better opportunity.”
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This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2025.
