Vienna’s Café Engländer closes temporarily after staff leave

Café Engländer, a long-established café in central Vienna, has temporarily closed after its entire staff decided to leave, ORF reported Thursday. The café was recently bought by the Plachutta and Friese hospitality families.

In a notice posted at the entrance, staff said the café was closing on 8 October and thanked customers for their loyalty. The departure followed an alleged dispute between staff and new owner Mario Plachutta, the newspaper Kurier first reported. Plachutta denied the allegations through his lawyer.

Vienna’s Chamber of Labour said it would support the employees. The chamber’s labour-law advice chief, Ludwig Dvorak, said the new owner had apparently driven away staff who had kept the business running in recent months with support from the Insolvency Remuneration Fund.

The fund covered wages in August and September, allowing a bidding process for the business to continue. The sale brought money into the insolvency estate for creditors, Dvorak said.

According to Kurier, staff had been expected to continue working under an insolvency administrator until mid-October. Their contracts did not require the new owners to take them on automatically.

An application to open restructuring proceedings for the café’s operating company was filed in early August, after its operator, Christian Wukonigg, died. The Plachutta and Friese families later won the bidding process to buy the café.