Despite being in middle of a post-bankruptcy restructuring and blowing through hundreds of millions a month to make that happen, Sears still wants to ensure its executives gets a nice, big paycheck.
Sears is currently seeking court approval on a bonus structure that would grant its top executives $19 million quarterly bonuses if they can meet their quarterly performance targets. This was created in an effort to keep all 340 of their executive staff on file, rather than lose them to another company in the post-bankruptcy confusion.
However, while the company is going out of its way to retain executive staff, retail workers are being laid off left and right, and they’re not happy. Many employees who were laid off were not given severance pay allegedly due to the money-consuming nature of the restructuring, but these hearty bonuses for the executives calls that into question.
Carrie Gleason, a campaign manager for the advocacy group Rise Up Retail, is particularly upset. “It’s outrageous that the bankruptcy court is considering bonuses for Sears’ high paid executives while laid off employees get their severance pay cut off,” she said. “This is exactly what happened at Toys ‘R’ Us. A handful of executives who couldn’t save the company got millions in bonuses while tens of thousands of dedicated employees were denied their promised severance pay.”
The final decision will be made by a judge on December 20th.
