Laid-off workers push for severance fund

In May, more than 30,000 Toys R Us workers got laid off — without severance — as the company started the process to shut down all its stores. Meanwhile, CEO David Brandon got $2.8 million in the form of a retention bonus right before the company filed for bankruptcy.

“This corporate greed is hurting me and my family — and it’s unacceptable,” wrote Colleen Kleven, a Toys R Us worker in the Bay Area, as part of a petition she started demanding that the private equity firms that used to own the company start a severance fund for the laidoff workers.

Last week, before the biggest shopping day of the year, private equity firms Bain Capital and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts announced each would contribute $10 million to a “financial assistance fund.” The firms encouraged others to also put money toward the fund.

Experts say the move, which could have broader implications when other major retailers go under, is an organizing success.

“We’re only talking about this because (the workers), like the Parkland kids, protested,” Eileen Appelbaum, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told the Huffington Post. “They said, ‘We built this, we’re entitled to severance, and we want it.’ ”

It’s not just Toys R Us workers: Working in an industry that’s increasingly under threat by changing consumer habits and technology, retail employees across the world are fighting for better wages and working conditions — most of them without unions.