Restaurant chain announces mass reductions of hours for Pa. employees

Ioannis Pashakis//April 29, 2020

The Tampa, Florida-based owner of restaurants such as Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, announced it will be “vastly reducing hours” for nearly 3,000 of its employees in Pennsylvania.

Bloomin’ Brands Inc., the owner of Outback, Carabba’s, Bonefish Grill and Fleming’s restaurants, wrote in a notice to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry that it will be reducing the hours of 2,952 employees at 46 locations in 17 counties throughout the state.

The company said that it has not yet announced furloughs or layoffs for any of the employees, but reported the reduction in working hours to the department in case a sudden reduction of hours constitutes a layoff under Pennsylvania’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.

Counties effected by the reductions include Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lehigh, Northampton and York.

Bloomin’ Brands wrote in the notice that it plans for the change to be temporary and plans to bring the employees back to pre-pandemic hours after its stores fully reopen.

“The company is optimistic that operations will resume as normal when the current COVID-19 pandemic has been contained,” the company wrote. “In the meantime, we have provided four weeks of relief pay to employees with vastly reduced hours.”

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