Art Van Furniture, the Midwestern furniture chain, originally told its employees last month that they’d be entitled to keep their coverage for 90 days as the company kept operating and started auctioning off its retail stores, Bloomberg News reported. Then the novel coronavirus spread and more states forced stores to shutter, turning the retailer’s slow liquidation into more of a fire sale. Workers learned their health benefits were getting cut off. Art Van’s workers sent a letter yesterday to the company’s private equity owner, Thomas H. Lee Partners, asking it to pay their health insurance for 90 days, and to create a fund for out-of-pocket costs. The employees’ trouble offers a sense of what might be coming for many struggling retailers. Stores are failing fast, leaving workers in many cases with no alternative but to lobby for compensation from owners, even as they push for broader legal and legislative protections, said Jack Raisner, a lawyer who often represents workers, including in the Art Van case. Art Van filed for bankruptcy in March, but weeks later it switched to a more accelerated liquidation. With its troubles mounting, the retailer terminated workers’ health benefits without the notice otherwise required by law. The U.S.’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers to give 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs. Some of the workers laid off in March filed a lawsuit in Art Van’s bankruptcy court citing the violation of the terms of the act.
