Boston Retail Jobs with Tweeter Cut
Posted on December 3, 2008
Hundreds of Boston retail jobs have been cut as a large chain store recently decided to close.
Tweeter, a local electronics chain that has found itself bankrupt, recently announced its decision to fire more than 600 employees at 70 stores across the country. These actions took place only days before the company was originally slated to close for good. The store had about 150 employees in Massachusetts, according to an article by The Boston Globe.
Many employees who lost their jobs are still owed at least one week’s pay, vacation time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses promised as part of a liquidation sale. Furthermore, many customers are unable to pick up merchandise they already purchased, and the liquidators handling the closing also have yet to be paid. There is still about $14 million worth of goods left in the stores.
Schultze Asset Management, a firm that bought the company for $38 million after its first bankruptcy in 2007, decided to shut down Tweeter after they paid off millions of dollars to Wells Fargo, the largest secured creditor. Schultze Asset Management, a New York investment firm which also had loaned money to Tweeter, was the second biggest creditor and decided not to put additional money into the company to cover expenses.
Several companies, including CRG Partners and Hudson Capital Partners, that were helping the company through its closing refused to comment on the issue. Many employees were told not to show up to work and that if they entered the building, they would be responsible for any lost merchandise. Because of this, some employees are planning to file complains with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.
“The employees don’t deserve this,” Kenneth Howell, former store manager at Tweeter in Burlington, Mass., said in the article. “It’s bad enough to be liquidated. But to be shut out of the stores, without wages and everything else owed. And now customers can’t get their merchandise. It’s totally unfair and pretty sad.”