Gardener’s Supply Lays Off Workers Ahead of Sale

click to enlarge

  • File: Bear Cieri
  • Seeds for sale at Gardener’s Supply

Burlington-based Gardener’s Supply is laying off about 40 workers as it prepares to sell to an Indiana competitor next week.

Gardens Alive! will pay $9 million for the company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June. As part of the deal, Gardener’s will pay a combined $7.8 million to Bank of America and Northfield Savings Bank to resolve liens on its assets and properties at closing, which will be on or before August 6, attorneys told a federal judge on Friday.

By August 6, the company will have shuttered both its “customer contact center” in Burlington’s Intervale and its warehouse in Milton, which employ about 20 workers apiece, according to four workers who spoke to Seven Days on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. As of Friday afternoon, the call center’s phone number is already out of service.

None of the fired workers will receive severance, they said, though they will be paid out some unused vacation time, according to an email obtained by Seven Days. They were given less than two weeks’ notice to find another job.

It’s unclear what the deal means for Gardener’s retail stores. On Thursday, the company sent out a promotional email announcing the seasonal closure of its Shelburne garden center, noting that the Burlington and Williston locations are open year-round. “See you again soon!” the email reads.

Neither CEO Rebecca Gray nor attorneys for either company responded to interview requests.

Meantime, the affected employees are left feeling bitter and betrayed by a company where some have worked for decades. They worry both about their own futures and that of an iconic Vermont brand that once prided itself on being employee-owned.

“It’s like the end times of Gardener’s Supply, and it feels pretty terrible,” one longtime call center worker said. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Gardener’s was founded in 1983 by a group of green thumbs including the late Will Raap, an entrepreneur who also started Burlington’s beloved Intervale Center. One of the state’s first employee-owned companies, Gardener’s became a go-to spot for plants, seeds and tools both online and at six retail stores in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The company has won the coveted Seven Daysies award for “Best Garden Center” nearly every year since at least 2004, including this year’s contest, the results of which were announced this week.

A gardening boom during the pandemic boosted the company’s bottom line, but sales dropped as life slowly returned to normal. Layoffs ensued, bringing the headcount to the present-day 126 full-time workers and close to 300 part-timers. Employees are offered stock options as part of the company’s ownership structure, but as revenue tanked, so, too, have their earnings.

In June, Gardener’s filed for bankruptcy in Delaware, indicating it wished to sell its assets to Gardens Alive! Based in Lawrenceburg, Ind., the company has acquired at least nine gardening businesses since its founding in 1984.

On July 24, Gardener’s sent a letter to employees warning them that they may be terminated as soon as August 1. Obtained by Seven Days, the letter didn’t specify which departments would be affected.

Four days later, workers at the call center and warehouse were called into separate virtual meetings and told their departments would cease operations by August 6, the expected date of the sale closing, they told Seven Days.

One longtime warehouse employee, who wasn’t at work that day, said she only learned about the layoffs after a colleague texted her. She returned to work the following day to an email from Gray, the CEO, announcing that another executive had been named general manager and would help through the transition. The email, provided to Seven Days, didn’t acknowledge the layoffs.

“There’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of disappointment, there’s a lot of tears,” she said. “There are employees in this building that have been here 20-plus years, and they’re getting nothing.”

Three call center employees interviewed by Seven Days reported similar sentiments among their colleagues, a handful of whom are near retirement age. One lamented how Gardener’s boasts about being 100 percent employee-owned — on its website, on T-shirts and in email signatures — only to dismiss workers unceremoniously and with little notice.

“It never occurred to me that this would be the end of it, that this would be how it would go down, because everybody was so dedicated,” another worker said, summing up her reaction succinctly: “It feels like shit.”

The call center was a key part of Gardener’s business, the workers said, particularly for older customers who still preferred to order items by phone. Employees took calls from all 50 states and Canada, and some knew frequent shoppers by name. Gardens Alive!, meantime, operates a call center in India.

The Milton warehouse fulfills nearly all of the company’s orders. Besides supplying local retail stores, workers there also package online orders from Amazon, Target and Wayfair.

Rachel Dumeny, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Labor, said in an email that the state will provide “rapid response services” to affected employees next week, including help applying for unemployment benefits.

The workers are still trying to process the situation. The warehouse employee said she’s spent time helping her colleagues write résumés when she should be working on her own. “I live paycheck to paycheck, too,” she said.

One of the call center workers has been asking her son, a recent college graduate, for advice on applying for jobs. Another is leaning on a friend who has experience with career counseling.

Without a severance package as a cushion, he’s beginning to worry.

“We’re all scrambling to try and figure out what we’re going to do for money and how we’re going to survive,” he said. “I think ‘fear’ is a good word.”






Source link

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top