Some 2,700 employees, nearly their entire workforce, lost their jobs this past Monday. United Furniture, a business based in Mississippi, fired their employees, by text, just days before Thanksgiving. One of the employees that were laid off, Marcus Nivens, said, “That rocks your world when something like that happens. That’s just not cool.”
The company, which had become one of the largest furniture businesses in the country, sent a memo via email and text message to workers late Monday night and instructed them not to report to work the next morning.
In a follow-up email, United Furniture Industries said the layoff is “expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of COBRA.”
COBRA is the federal law that provides people who lose their jobs with the option to keep their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage under some circumstances.
Many of those who were fired were asleep when the emails were sent and some never even saw them before heading to their shifts on Tuesday.
Truck drivers who were out making deliveries were told to return to a United Furniture location immediately to turn in their vehicles.
The layoffs were on behalf of the company’s board of directors and the reason for the layoffs are for “unforeseen business circumstances.” The layoff’s also happened at United Furniture’s North Carolina and California locations.
This comes after the company let go of 300 people over the summer. One of the former employees has already taken legal action over the mass firing. I say good for them and hopefully, more people will sue. There was no need to fire these people through emails and text. It just makes it all the worse that it was right before Thanksgiving.
Source Fox Business
