Posted on 04/20/2023 10:51:13 AM PDT by george76
Bed Bath & Beyond didn't pay severance to thousands of workers. The company laid off more than 1,000 workers in New Jersey days before a new severance law took effect.
In early February, Diane Zaccagna learned that the Bed Bath & Beyond store in New Jersey where she had been working for 18 and a half years was closing and she would be laid off.
"We knew Bed Bath was in trouble, but we thought we would have at least a couple more years," said Zaccagna, 50, who started out as a part-time employee and climbed her way to a merchandise supervisor.
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Managers initially told Zaccagna and around 25 employees at the store that they would receive severance pay. Bed Bath & Beyond has been on bankruptcy watch and has been closing hundreds of stores since late 2022.
Laid-off workers at previously shuttered stores received severance packages, and so Zaccagna assumed it would be the same for her store. The severance plan for full-time workers laid off in earlier rounds of Bed Bath & Beyond closures was one week of regular pay for each year of service, with a maximum of 10 weeks severance. For supervisors, the maximum was 12 weeks of severance pay.
But Bed Bath & Beyond never paid severance to Zaccagna and her co-workers. The company also told employees it would not match annual contributions to their 401(k) retirement savings plans they paid into for all of 2022.
"In the end, I'm heartbroken. I'm very disappointed in how they handled it," she told CNN. "It was a punch in the gut."
She feels the company abandoned her and co-workers and that their years of loyalty meant nothing at the end.
But the timing of the layoffs angered her most.
Gaps in severance protections Bed Bath & Beyond, based in Union, New Jersey, laid off 1,295 workers in its home state, including at Harmon Face Value stores, just days before a new law kicked in that mandates severance pay — equal to one week of pay for each year of employment — for workers who lose their job in mass layoffs at large employers in New Jersey.
The law also requires that large employers, defined as businesses with more than 100 workers, must give workers at least 90 days notice for mass layoffs, up from 60 days. Prior to the law's enactment, employers in the state were only required to pay workers severance if they failed to notify employees they were being let go within 60 days. The law also expands severance benefits for part-time workers and includes other worker protections.
"Knowing the law took effect a week after — it's even worse," said Zaccagna, who is job hunting and plans to start a new career outside of retail. "Every single person in New Jersey knows it's wrong."
Bed Bath & Beyond said in a statement that, as a practice, it does not comment on specific employee matters.
"Every decision over the past several months has been the product of diligent analysis, advisement, and consideration," the company said. "The difficult but necessary decision to reduce our workforce impacted valued colleagues and is one of many crucial actions taken to enable Bed Bath & Beyond to improve our financial position and serve our customers well into the future."
The company did not specifically address not paying severance.
New Jersey is the first state in the country to implement guaranteed severance pay protections for workers at large chains. The law was inspired by Toys "R" Us, Sears and Forever 21 and other chains that filed for bankruptcy and attempted to avoid paying workers severance, said New Jersey State Sen. Joseph Cryan, who introduced the legislation.
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Bed Bath & Beyond's timing was deliberate and designed to get around the new legislation, Cryan charged. "It is intentional, it is calculated, and it is disgraceful," he said.
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There is no federal requirement for severance pay, although some collective bargaining agreements with unions cover severance agreements. Senior executives often have multimillion-dollar severance plans with employers and receive lucrative retention bonuses to stay with companies if they file for bankruptcy.
At Bed Bath & Beyond, CEO Sue Gove is eligible for $7.1 million in severance pay and former Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Mark Tritton is suing the company for $6.8 million in unpaid severance.
The absence of severance pay requirements for frontline workers in the United States is "one of the many holes in our protective workplace legislation," said David Weil, a professor at Brandeis University
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'This was our reward'..
Some Bed Bath & Beyond employees recently laid off in other states did not receive severance pay either
They’re headed for bankruptcy (again). They raised a couple hundred million bucks a few months ago but I guess it didn’t last very long.
Personally I think they have had, among other problems, a branding problem. HomeGoods which is owned by TJ Maxx/Marshall’s does bang up business. BBBY sounds like a place to buy stuff for your bathroom - even though they sell all kinds of home items - and how often do people need to buy towels and sheets? It’s probably too late, but they should have renamed their stores and their marketing.
Maybe Bed Bath & Beyond ‘stiffed’ those former employees because of the new law.
I wonder where in The Constitution does it say, governments can require a private company to pay employees anything. I thought employment was an agreement between private parties.
These sanctimonious swine at Bed Bath and Beyond pontificated as superior to the My Pillow Guy who has not only not done what they have done but paid his people throughout the covid lunacy.
These sanctimonious swine at Bed Bath and Beyond pontificated as superior to the My Pillow Guy who has not only not done what they have done but paid his people throughout the covid lunacy.
Yet they dropped him because of politics....Scum
(Bed Bath & Beyond has been on bankruptcy watch and has been closing hundreds of stores since late 2022.)
I have not set foot inside BB&B since they attacked Mike Lindell and MyPillow.
Sorry for the workers. There’s hardly any company which doesn’t keep jumping into politics in some form these days.
The last time I stepped foot into a BBB was probably 10 years ago and even then I could see it was a dinosaur.
Cluttered and overpriced.
When BB&B became woke, they became evil. You chose to work for an evil Co. No sympathy.
Nobody was stiffed, the law followed every step of the way.
Anyone remember W.T. Grant?
Getting stiffed on severance seems to be the current fad. I was let go last week, after having worked at the company just shy of 9 years, and being the COO of the company when I was let go. I got 1 month severance ... period. I was stiffed out of anything for the bonus I was eligible for in 3 months. Considering I was given control of Accounting in addition to my other responsibilities 2 days before I was let go, I have a reasonable expectation that I would have gotten the bonus.
Most companies nowadays don’t give 2 s**ts about their employees.
Employees are at the end of the line, everyone passes on their expenses to the employees where they have no recourse and are unable to pass it along to anyone else. Those at the end of the line, eat s***.
Why not make it 17 million?
.
Yes, I do.
My father had a wheelbarrow he bought at Grants. (It was blue.)
But what about W.T.?
Where are they going to get the money if the company is bankrupt?
Squeeze the employees to bump their severance.
There’s nothing in a BB&B that you can’t get cheaper elsewhere. They did have a good return policy, which I only discovered when one of my daughter’s wedding gifts didn’t work - they exchanged it no questions asked, even with no receipt and over a year after the wedding. Don’t miss the one near me which closed last year.
They were the top dog in retail at the time and went BK.
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