Sears Canada Pays Execs Bonuses While Laid-Off Workers Get No Severance

After filing for bankruptcy protection in an Ontario court last month, Sears Canada said Friday that it plans to dole out big bonuses to senior management while the retailer trudges through a painful restructuring, even as thousands of laid-off workers aren"t being paid promised severance.

According to court documents, Sears - which promised to close 59 stores and eliminate 2,900 jobs across the country as part of a court-supervised restructuring process - will pay up to $7.6 million in retention bonuses to 43 executives and senior managers at the company"s head office in Toronto – the same management team that lead the company as sales plummeted and it spiraled into insolvency. As CBC News reports, that works out to an average of $176,744 per employee, although it"s unlikely the money will be divided up so evenly.

Meanwhile, the company said it won"t be paying lower-level employees a severance, which could equate to a loss of tens of thousands of dollars per person. Predictably, the news isn"t going over well with the company"s laid-off workers.

"Why aren"t they able to pay us out the severance if they have this [bonus] money?" says Zobeida Maharaj, a laid-off senior operations manager who spent 28 years working for Sears in the Toronto area.

"They have no moral values, no compassion, nothing in their hearts."

Sears argues that the hefty paydays are necessary to keep the management team from jumping ship as the company restructures.

Sears Canada points out that the bonus payments — known as the Key Employee Retention Program (KERP) — have been approved by the Ontario Superior Court. Offering cash incentives during restructuring is common and often necessary to retain key employees, the company said.

"A lack of a KERP in this scenario would potentially result in a worse outcome and negatively impact a variety of stakeholders," spokesperson Joel Shaffer told CBC News.

In a revelatory twist, the managers who guided the company into bankruptcy stand to profit handsomely by doing so; many could reap enormous bonus payments beyond those mentioned above, including incentive-based payoffs, if they can bring the company through bankruptcy intact.

“The executives and senior managers tasked with guiding Sears through the restructuring will earn up to an additional 25 per cent to 100 per cent, on top of their base salary.

Most will get their bonuses in quarterly installments, receiving 75 per cent of their payments within six months. The final 25 per cent won"t be paid out until a successful restructuring is complete.

Sears also plans to pay retention bonuses of up to $1.6 million to 116 senior store employees who will oversee liquidation sales at locations that are closing. That amount works out to an average of $13,793 each and will be contingent on certain sales targets.”

But try explaining to recently unemployed Sears workers why the compay should be allowed to pay out these bonuses before the severence payments promised to them and thousands of their peers.

[Zobeida ] Maharaj says she can understand paying retention bonuses to store employees working on the front lines. But she argues the big payouts to higher-ups at head office are unfair when ex-workers like her have lost their severance.

"I"m shocked as to how they got this grant permitted to have these people — these headquarters [big-wigs] — fill their pockets even more on the suffering of Sears employees," says Maharaj. "We"re just the little ants at the bottom."

Rosa Dalessandro also wonders why there"s money to pay Sears executives when she"s losing severance that amounts to about a year"s salary.

"It"s very upsetting," says the former Toronto-based sales manager, who worked for the company for 20 years.

Dalessandro was laid off in March and Sears cut off her severance payments last month. This week, the retailer also cut her benefits and she got hit with an unexpected $400 dental bill.

"I"m opening all the bills right now and I"m like, "Wow, wow, wow," because you don"t have money coming in. It"s really affected me and my family," says Dalessandro.

"It"s almost like what they took from us, they"re giving to the executives downtown."

Sears management argues that the bonuses are necessary to ensure that important employees stick around to help rebuild the company as it struggles through bankruptcy.

While it may sound "cold and heartless" to some workers, putting money aside to keep key employees is considered a prudent move, says employment lawyer Adrian Ishak. "These KERPS are a necessary evil."

When a company is insolvent, Ishak explains, creditors line up to try to recoup their losses. While laid-off employees are considered low priority, retention bonuses for key staff — if approved by the court — often get top priority because those employees are needed to help restructure the company.

"Where you really need to incentivize are people at the top levels, those who are going to be responsible for elaborating the plan, as well as implementing it," says Ishak, a partner with Rubin Thomlinson LLP in Toronto.

If key staff manage to successfully restructure Sears, he adds, it will be the best-case scenario for the company"s creditors. "If it"s a continuing enterprise, there will be far fewer losers," he says.

But perhaps the most outrageous injustices can be found at the highest level of Sears senior management, where CEO Eddie Lambert has spent years laying claim to the company’s assets.

As we’ve reported, previously if Sears Canada were to go bankrupt, Lambert - also the company"s largest shareholder - loses his equity stake, but he remains the company’s principal creditor. Already, Lampert has effectively laid claim to enormous amounts of the company’s assets through loans he’s made. His hedge fund, ESL Investments, also owns large stakes in Lands’ End and a Real Estate Investment Trust that gained control of some of Sears’ best properties in a $2.8 billion deal back in 2015, then leased them back to the company.

As is the case in many bankruptcy filings, the owners and managers of the company protected themselves while the company floundered. Now, Sears employees will need to make do without thousands of dollars in wages they had been anticipating.
 

Canadian Mint Worker Sentenced To 30 Months For Smuggling $140,000 Of Gold In His Rectum

In September we reported that an employee of the Royal Canadian Mint smuggled C$180,000 (USD $140,000) in gold from the fortress-like facility, evading multiple levels of detection with a time-honoured prison trick: hiding the precious metal up his butt.

Having been found guilty in November ("wait, what gold coins, where?"), 35-year-old Leston Lawrence was sentenced to 30 months in prison today, by a judge whose name was "Doody".

As we detailed previously, a suspicious bank teller raised the alarm in 2015. Lawrence sold 18 gold pucks — each a circular 7.4-ounce nugget worth about $6,800 — to an Ottawa Gold Buyers store between Nov. 27, 2014, and March 12, 2015, according to court records obtained by the Toronto Sun. Three observations tipped off the bank teller: Lawrence was a mint employee, he had an unusual number of deposits and he frequently requested overseas transactions.

Furthermore, as the OC reports, the case is "an illuminating look at security measures inside the Mint, the building on Sussex Drive that produces hundreds of millions of gold coins annually for the federal Crown corporation." Or rather lack thereof.

The defense was not happy: “Appalling,” was the conclusion of defence lawyer Gary Barnes, who described the Crown’s case as an underwhelming collection of circumstantial evidence. “This is the Royal Canadian Mint, your Honour, and one would think they should have the highest security measures imaginable,” Barnes said in his closing submission. “And here the gold is left sitting around in open buckets.”

He is right, and perhaps anyone who keeps their gold at the mint may want to reconsider the venue of storage.

Court was further told that, on multiple occasions, Lawrence took small circular chunks of gold - or “pucks” - to Ottawa Gold Buyers in the Westgate Shopping Centre on Carling Avenue. Typically, the pucks weighed about 210 grams, or 7.4 ounces, for which he was given cheques in the $6,800 range, depending on fluctuating gold prices, court heard. He then deposited the cheques at the Royal Bank in the same mall.

One day a teller became suspicious at the size and number of Ottawa Gold Buyers cheques being deposited and Lawrence’s request to wire money out of the country. She then noticed on his account profile that he worked at the Mint. The first red flag was up. Bank security was alerted, then the RCMP, which began to investigate. Eventually, a search warrant was obtained and four Mint-style pucks were found in Lawrence’s safety deposit box, court heard.

Records revealed 18 pucks had been sold between Nov. 27, 2014 and March 12, 2015. Together with dozens of gold coins that were redeemed, the total value of the suspected theft was conservatively estimated at C$179,015.

That said, the defence countered with a couple of important points. The Crown was not able to prove conclusively that the gold in Lawrence’s possession actually came from inside the Mint. It had no markings nor, apparently, had any gold been reported missing internally. The Crown was able to show the pucks precisely fit the Mint’s custom “dipping spoon” made in-house — not available commercially — that is used to scoop molten gold during the production process.

Still, one question remained unanswered at the trial: how did the gold get out of the Mint?

The court was told Lawrence set off the metal detector at an exit from the “secure area” with more frequency than any other employee — save those with metal medical implants. When that happened, the procedure was to do a manual search with a hand-held wand, a search that he always passed. (It was not uncommon for employees to set off the detector, court heard.)

Investigators also found a container of vaseline in his locker and the trial was presented with the prospect that a puck could be concealed in an anal cavity and not be detected by the wand. In preparation for these proceedings, in fact, a security employee actually tested the idea, Barnes said.

As a result, prosecutors alleged that Lawrence smuggled out gold nuggets inside his rectum.

And now, almost 2 years later, as AP reports, the former Royal Canadian Mint employee who stole 22 cookie-sized pieces of refined gold by hiding them in his rectum has been sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Thirty-five-year-old Leston Lawrence was found guilty last November of stealing the pieces from the mint and selling 17 of them through Ottawa Gold Buyers.

Ontario Court judge Peter Doody on Thursday sentenced Lawrence and ordered him to pay a fine of US$145,900 (CA$190,000).

Doody says the stolen gold was worth US$127,116.11 (CA$165,451.14) which Lawrence sent abroad to build a house in Jamaica and buy a boat in Florida, among other transactions.

Court testimony indicated that Lawrence was involved in purifying recently procured gold and sometimes worked alone, out of sight of security cameras.

The Royal Canadian Mint has announced intentions to improve their security in the wake of the crime:

"upgrades to our facility"s security checkpoint and screening process; upgrades to our camera system to high definition which provides real-time monitoring capability in all areas of the mint; and working closely with CATSA [Canadian Air Transport Security Authority] to establish more robust scanning training of our employees."

"The mint is one of the most secure facilities in Canada and we are confident that we have the right security measures in place to effectively operate our business,"

The mint did not comment as to whether or not employees will now face rectal-cavity searches.

Maybe those cryptocurrency types are right - hording gold is a pain in the ass.