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That's about as cold blooded and evil an act any business could do towards its own employees.
It's bad enough to get fired days before Thanksgiving, but to do it by text? How cowardly is that? And the kicker? No extension of benefits especially COBRA.
And then to think some employers get upset that people don't give 2 weeks notice before quitting.
This company might have gotten pandemic loans as well.
Right before midnight on 21 November, thousands of workers – many of whom were asleep – received a text message from United Furniture Industries (UFI) saying that they were terminated effectively and were no longer allowed to return to work.
“At the instruction of the board of directors … we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances, the company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately,” the message, which the New York Post reviewed, said.
“Your layoff from the company is expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of Cobra,” a follow-up email from the company read, referring to a federal law that gives employees who lose their jobs the option to keep their employer-sponsored health insurance under certain circumstances.
Terminated all of its employees at once through text and e-mail in the middle of the night....that's dirty. That's some hardcore nonsense right there. It does look like the writing has been on the wall though, with recent firings of the CEO, CFO, EVP of sales, then weeks later 500 employees across 3 facilities...yikes
They get mad cuz we don't give notice but it's ok for them to do crappy stuff like that to people. Hell anymore if you have more than 8 instances of being sick they can fire you. That's why so many places are short handed all the time. I hate working in general but it has to be done. But as awful as they are to their workers it's not worth killing yourself over.
It's easy for an employer to mitigate an employee WARN lawsuits by continuing to pay them for the next 60 days or provide a lump equal to 60 days. If they are going to do that (based on timeline of this event they still may have another full week to decide), there would be no basis for a lawsuit monetary settlement.
Since there are no more employees covered under a health plan, the company has no requirement to offer COBRA. Employees can immediately seek private health care coverage under the ACA.
Considering the propensity for workers to engage in workplace violence, probably was a smart move to terminate all employment while nobody was physically at the worksite.
The means of laying people off via text isn't new, and middle-of-the-night closures also isn't new. But the directions to truck drivers to return with cargo undelivered is a bit unusual (presumably the dispatchers were also laid off, leaving the drivers without guidance on how to get from their overnight stop to the designated return site?).
It appears that not only is the company violating WARN Act requirements, but also violating COBRA regulations. I'm also curious how they arranged for employees group health insurance to be terminated mid-month--perhaps they were already behind on premiums?
There's no arguing that this was a terrible thing to do, but it seems that this company was in severe financial difficulties.
I'll be interested to hear how the lawsuits go. If a company has zero money left, they can't possibly pay anyone for even a week's worth of pay to soften the blow.
My heart goes out to the sick people that now do not have health insurance coverage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Creekcat
I thought I saw where Lane Furniture also had a sizable reduction, not mentioned in article are they part of this?
Lane is connected to the company that closed according to the article below. The closed company bought out Lane a few years ago.
Former UFI employees, operating under the Lane Furniture brand name, were blindsided early Tuesday morning after receiving either an email or text message instructing them not to report to work that day because their jobs were being immediately terminated “due to unforeseen business circumstances.”
As of publication Wednesday, Todd Evans, CEO of UFI, failed to respond to FreightWaves’ requests seeking comment about what precipitated the mass firing.
One former employee said generations of her family had worked for Lane Furniture before United Furniture Industries bought the furniture manufacturer from Heritage Home Group in 2017.
She said nothing prepared her and other family members who worked for the company that they would be fired via email or would no longer have health insurance.
While there was no communication from UFI executives as to what led to its abrupt closure, former employees did receive an update message late Tuesday about retrieving their belongings.
“As soon as the property manager can provide a safe and orderly process for former employees to come and gather their belongings, they will do so,” UFI/Lane Corporate Communications said in an email, which was obtained by FreightWaves. “We are not certain of the timeframe for this but will communicate proactively.”
I worked for a ritzy country club in the 80's. We worked Saturday, everything was normal and I was one of the first people to work on Sunday am (golf course). When I got to the clubhouse door, my key didn't work. Developer pulled the plug, he changed the locks and never told anyone. It was a hard line tactic to get the residents to takeover the expenses of running the money pit of a golf club.
It worked, club was back open in a few days.
Sorry the furniture folks lost their jobs but they had to see the production was down, things weren't great so they shouldn't have been surprised.
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