SEARS DAZE

PETER MYERS THOUGHT IT MIGHT JUST SAVE HIS JOB AT SEARS. Get a big name movie star to make a TV commercial promoting Sears. Companies have done it to sell everything from cars to toothpaste. Why not Sears?

Luckily Peter had an in with a big name movie star whom he could ask: his brother Mike.

So, in the summer of 2016 Mike Myers the TV star of seven seasons on SNL, the star of three Austin Powers spy spoof movie hits and the star of the two cult movie hits Wayne’s World made a TV commercial to help his brother save his job. It didn’t work.

In the summer of 2017 Sears announced the closing of 59 stores. Twenty-nine hundred workers would be thrown overboard. Mike Myers’ brother Peter was one of them.

Sears made the move as part of a desperate scheme to salvage something for it’s shareholders. The clever ad man’s tag line in the TV commercial—“Sears: my brother works there” —became a cruel joke on the workers. None of the 2,900 were laughing.

Workers left unprotected

Sears owes a lot of money ($13.9 billion) to a lot of people. But, under our bankruptcy laws what it owes its workers doesn’t count. If Sears goes bankrupt everyone else it owes money to comes first. Once the “secured creditors” take theirs it’s almost certain there will be nothing left for the workers.

Under the law workers can be denied the severance and vacation pay they are owed as failing companies try to avoid bankruptcy. Should the company actually go bankrupt the workers may even lose their wages.

Current retirees and active employees can see their pensions slashed too, or even disappear entirely if bankruptcy trustees so decide.

Sears Canada is not unionized. So the workers are entirely at the mercy of the system. And what a system it is.

Feels unCanadian

Peter Myers is 59. He worked for Sears for 36 years. Now he is out of a job. He is owed two years of severance. He will get nothing. Nor will any of the other abandoned Sears workers.

“There are people across the country saying, ‘Why would I do business with a company that treats employees like this’” he says. “It sort of doesn’t feel very Canadian to a lot of people.”

“There’s kind of a dichotomy between what people think of as Sears and kind of the corporate reality of it today,” he says. “I guess the commercial I did with my brother and my being laid off sort of epitomizes that to a degree.”

Sears workers hit hard

The Sears pension fund is underfunded by $267 million. The employer has been paying $3.7 million per month to address that problem, but has now received a court go-ahead to stop the payments by the end of September. This will almost inevitably lead to reduced pensions.

Contributions to the health and life insurance benefits of retirees will also be stopped as of September 30. Retirees, just like the newly laid-off Sears employees, are considered “unsecured creditors” under Canadian law. Secured creditors, like banks, are first in line to scoop up the anything of value if Sears goes under.

Sue Earl is a 38-year Sears veteran. She is losing more than $20,000 in severance benefits. “I feel robbed,” she says. “We’re mad as hell. We’ve supported Sears with positive attitudes, and this is how we’re treated.”

Joseph Moczulski, who retired in 2004 after 35 years with Sears, is facing the loss of his medical benefits. “It will be a hardship,” he says. “We don’t have any rights under this court protection.” He and his spouse suffer from diabetes.

Sears big wigs get bonuses

Sears Canada senior executives will share $7.6 million in retention bonuses as a reward for all their good work driving the company into the ground. That works out to $176,744 each.

Meanwhile 116 “key” workers (managers) in selected Sears stores will share $1.6 million. That works out to $13,793 each—one twelfth of what the executives will get.

But, there is still nothing at all for the workers in the 59 closed stores.

None of this sits well with the public. There is an online petition in support of the abandoned workers. Sears has also grudgingly moved $500,000 from the bonus fund to set up an employee “hardship fund.” That works out to about $172 per worker.

“Why aren’t they able to pay us out the severance if they have this money?” asks Zobeida Maharaj, who worked for Sears for 28 years. “They have no moral values, no compassion, nothing in their hearts….We’re just the little ants at the bottom.”