By Bruce Miller
New Jersey was once a state of unlimited opportunities. I’ll never forget the day I closed escrow on my house in 1995. It was the happiest day of my life. I was finally living the American Dream.
I also had a well-paying job at our local Sears Auto Center in Toms River. I started entry-level in maintenance and I dedicated myself for 35 years to the company, ultimately working my way up to Automotive Technician Level 3. Business was ripe in the Garden State.
But my American Dream eventually turned into a nightmare -- one I’m still living in today.
In April 2018, my store closed and I was laid off. In the last 15 years, Sears went from being on top as a retailer, to the bottom of the barrel. At the Auto Center I worked, we went from servicing 100 cars per day to 10 cars per day, and the person driving my company to the ground was billionaire Eddie Lampert.
Since Eddie Lampert’s multi-million dollar hedge fund got involved with Sears in 2005, employees like me were on the chopping block within months. Over the years, as Lampert used Sears as his own piggy bank and destroyed our iconic company, it was everyday people like me and my coworkers that paid the price. I got eight weeks of severance pay, despite dedicating 35 years of service to the company. I lost my American dream -- my income, my house, and my medical insurance -- while Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund walked away with millions.
To date, it’s been impossible to find a stable job and I have been living off of odd jobs and measly annuities from my pension.
Since 2018, over 20,000 New Jersey residents have lost their jobs. And many people working in the retail industry like me dedicated years to their respective companies and were then kicked to the curb by corporate billionaires who have one end goal in mind: get-rich-quick regardless of the number of lives and economies ruined.
It happened with Toys ‘R’ Us when private equity firms headed by Wall Street billionaires closed down the company for good, taking away employees’ once-promised severance pay. Toys ‘R’ Us employees took matters into their own hands, organized with United for Respect, fought, and ultimately won a $20 million hardship fund.
And it happened with Payless. Private equity firms also drove the company into bankruptcy and while their severance policy was to receive a week of pay per year of service, laid off employees who had worked decades for the company received severance pay equaling as little as three day’s worth of work.
It will happen again and again unless legislators stand up to these billionaire bullies who don’t care about devastating our local economies, ruining lives, or making people feel worthless because there are currently no state laws mandating that working families get severance pay they earned to help them get back on their feet when their company is driven to the ground.
However, the New Jersey Guaranteed Severance Pay Bill is a beacon of hope. If signed into law, S3170 and A5145 would establish a common sense severance policy - a mandatory week of pay for every year of service - for working people.
At a time when billionaires are destroying lives by cutting jobs, leaving working people without health insurance, and offering little to no severance pay to make themselves richer, it is hopeful to know they’ll be held accountable for their greedy behavior thanks to the leadership of New Jersey legislators who are standing alongside their constituents instead of Wall Street billionaires.
S3170 was approved by the Senate in December and before heading to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk, the New Jersey State Assembly has to approve A5145. I hope that our Assembly members will also choose to stand with working families and support this common sense piece of legislation. One that puts people over profit, working families over greed, and New Jersey residents over Wall Street billionaires.
I eagerly await your “aye” vote.
Bruce Miller is a leader with United for Respect and a former Sears employee. He lives in Manchester.
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