Nightclub Employees Protest

Patrons of the comedy club Catch a Rising Star were greeted at the door last week with serious business--a picket line of former employees handing out flyers urging the boycott of the establishment.

The picketers were the former wait and bar staff of the club, which was replaced after James J. Murphy took over as manager earlier this month.

Murphy said that only five people were fired, and that the workers were replaced "with people who did the job a lot better."

"They're just picketing because they're trying to be spiteful," Murphy said. "We're trying to look forward."

But former employees say that though the bar's action was legal, they are upset by the way in which it took place.

Employees who were let go were given neither a reason nor official notification, said Britton S. Boughner, who had worked as a bartender at the club since it opened in 1987.

"Some people came in to work on Monday [October 5] not knowing they had been fired," Boughner said.

Karen G. Thomas, who had worked at the bar as a waitress for six years, echoed Boughner's account.

"They never really told us we were fired. There was no pink slip, no telephone call," Thomas said. "I got to work one day after being home for a week with a sprained ankle and found out I wasn't on the schedule."

Boughner and Thomas estimate that 15 people lost their jobs. The number of people actually fired, how-ever, is smaller, since some employees walked out on their own.

Diane H. DiNardo, who had worked at the club for six years, was one of three waitresses who quit on Saturday, September 26.

DiNardo said she did so only after Murphy announced earlier the same day that he had placed a want ad in The Boston Globe for Monday, September 28 and was looking for an entire new staff.

"I didn't want to wait around to be fired," DiNardo said. "I was feeling a total loss of power and loss of control."

She estimated the total number of people fired to be eight or nine and those who walked out to be six or seven.

Edward J. Fasano, who worked at the club as a bartender for about two years, said the group has now stopped picketing and is instead writing letters to the owners.

Fasano also said the group has collected the signatures of about 350 patrons on a petition expressing support for the workers who lost their jobs. The petition will be sent to the owners of the club in New York.