<p>Over 100 workers across the country were fired after skipping work Thursday to participate in the &ldquo;Day Without Immigrants&rdquo; protest. ;</p>
<p>The boycott was held to show opposition to President Trump&rsquo;s hardline stance on immigration, including his recent travel ban and plans to build a border wall with Mexico. ;</p>
<p>Some businesses warned employees beforehand that their jobs would be forfeit if they attended the protest, while others simply fired workers when they didn&#8217;t show up for their shifts. ;</p>
<p>The protest was designed to show how important immigrants are to the economy, but employees need to understand that skipping work &ndash; for any reason &ndash; has consequences. According to US law, an employer can fire an employee without warning and with no reason given. ;</p>
<p>Bill McNally, owner of &ldquo;I Don&rsquo;t Care Bar &; Grill&rdquo; in Tulsa, OK fired 12 Hispanic line cooks when they failed to show up for work on Thursday. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m on their side, but we have rules,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re going to be late, call in. If you&rsquo;re not coming to work, call us. That&rsquo;s the American way.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Six of the cooks told CNN affiliate KTUL that they didn&rsquo;t think they would be fired for joining the protest.  ;</p>
<p>McNally said the cooks would not have been fired if they would have called ahead of time. &ldquo;They just forgot about the other 50 people who work here. If the cooks don&rsquo;t show up, then servers don&rsquo;t have jobs and customers don&rsquo;t eat.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>Six workers were fired from a Bahama Breeze in Philadelphia, but were then rehired &ldquo;to make it look like nothing happened,&rdquo; reports immigration activist Carmen Guerrero. ;</p>
<p>Nashville painting company Bradley Coatings Inc. fired 18 workers after they failed to show up on Thursday. &ldquo;We are the team leaders directly under the supervisors and they informed us last night that we could not go back to work and the boss said we were fired,&rdquo; said one of the employees. ;</p>
<p>According to the company&rsquo;s attorney, employees were warned in advance that they would be &ldquo;terminated&rdquo; if they did not show up for work on Thursday. ;</p>
<p>Jim Serowski, owner of JVS Masonry in Commerce City, Colorado, also told employees they would lose their jobs if they skipped work Thursday. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re going to stand up for what you believe in, you have to be willing to pay the price,&rdquo; he said. ;</p>
<p>Serowski is a longtime supporter of immigrant labor, but he fired 30 bricklayers and a handful of foreman after they failed to show up on Thursday.</p>
<p>He is distraught but not regretful. &ldquo;I stand by what I believe in. I didn&rsquo;t do anything wrong,&rdquo; he told CNN. &ldquo;They were warned, &lsquo;if you do this you&rsquo;re hurting the company, and if you go against the team you&rsquo;re not a member of the team.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve gone above and beyond for these people,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;No one is going to dictate how my company is run.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>Several students also participated in the protest by skipping school on Thursday. Some parents even took their children out of school to attend the event.</p>
<p>&ldquo;When he asked why he wasn&rsquo;t going to school, I told him because today he was going to learn about immigration,&rdquo; said Bolivian immigrant Marcela Ardaya-Vargas after she took her son out of school to attend a march in Washington. &ldquo;Our job as citizens is to unite with our brothers and sisters.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>Pro-immigrant protests continued Friday with a &ldquo;Free the People Immigration March&rdquo; in LA and a similar march and rally in Dallas.</p>
<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note:</strong> I certainly sympathize with the employers in this case. You are free to protest, but do it on your own time. If you are protesting on my company&#8217;s time then you are costing me money. That means I&#8217;m paying for your protest. No.</p>