Employer Loyalty?

Wet Seal, a clothing retailer, is now at the center of anger for making redundant its employees in a manner that was unnecessary and brutal. The store just announced closing at least 60 stores within a week, giving hundreds of part-time employees just a day’s notice, while managers got a few additional days of beforehand notice. Unused vacation and sick days have gone unpaid.

Wet Seal also became mired in a racial-discrimination lawsuit that accused the retailer of firing black employees in favor of hiring white workers. An investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found evidence that Wet Seal corporate managers openly stated that to be profitable the stores had to retain workers with "the Armani look" -- meaning thin, blond and blue-eyed. Wet Seal agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle the lawsuit.

“If you were among those treated so shabbily by Wet Seal you have to realize all you were to them was part of a spreadsheet...” said Liz Ryan, CEO and founder of Human Workplace, a coaching and consulting firm in Boulder, Colorado. 

Adding salt to the injury, while the company announced it was in not financial state to pay severance pay, it did go ahead and authorize the interim chief financial officer a $95,000 raise on the same day the closures were announced.