Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. isn’t paying severance to employees at stores across the U.S. that it has recently said will close, according to current and former staff members, a sign the retailer is trying to save cash to stabilize its floundering business, Bloomberg News reported. Bed Bath & Beyond executives told staffers around early February that they are rolling out an additional round of store closings and informed workers at those locations that they wouldn’t receive severance, according to internal correspondence and documents seen by Bloomberg News, along with the current and former employees. Bed Bath & Beyond has offered to make a lump-sum payment to some higher-level employees who stay through closing, including $2,000 for store managers and $1,500 for assistant store managers, according to some of the current staff members and an internal company document. Those payments, though, would likely never materialize if the retailer were to file for bankruptcy protection in the interim. Workers’ unpaid checks become unsecured claims in a bankruptcy scenario, taking a back seat in repayment priority to other debts owed by the company.
