Uniform chain’s collapse settles at $325K
The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Parker School Uniforms has reached a settlement of litigation against four former executives over the company’s 2018 collapse.
Creditors of the chain, which operated 47 retail stores in San Antonio, Houston and other cities, won’t see a big windfall, however.
Chapter 7 trustee Jeoffrey Burtch last month asked a Delaware bankruptcy judge to approve a $325,000 settlement with former Parker CEO Troy Pike and CFO Don Van der Wiel of Houston, vice president of sales Amy Allison Balthrope of San Antonio, and vice president of merchandising Susen Sarpa of California.
Lawyers who represented Burtch in the five lawsuits, including one filed in state District Court in San Antonio, stand to receive 40 percent of the settlement, or $130,000.
The rest, minus any other fees or costs, will go to Parker’s creditors.
The Houston-based company unexpectedly shut down in early 2018 after 87 years in business. Parker was a major provider of school uniforms to private and charters schools in Texas and other Sunbelt states. Its collapse cost 320 em
“This time is different, and that’s because of vaccines,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at job site Ziprecruiter. “It’s real this time.”
Heather Stidham lost her job at an Atlanta-area Olive Garden last spring and has not worked since. But Monday, she will start a new job working for the state of Georgia, processing applications for rental assistance as part of a federally funded aid program.
“My whole attitude, my whole way of thinking has shifted,” said Stidham, 43. “I feel like a thousand pounds had been lifted off of me, just to know I’d be getting a paycheck again.”
Still, getting back to work will not undo the damage of the past year. Stidham is months behind on her rent, and she fears she will not be able to catch up in time to avoid eviction. And the extended period out of work has affected her mental and physical health in ways that will not be easy to reverse.
“It’s affecting our lives in every way,” she said. “It becomes fight or flight. You go into survival mode.”
More than 4 million people have been out of work for more than six months, a number that continued rising in March. Millions more are out of the labor force entirely — with people who are not looking for work factored in, the unemployment rate would be above 9 percent. And the rebound has been uneven: The unemployment rate among Asians rose nearly a point in March, while Black workers
have seen slower job gains than other groups.
“What we need is an acceleration of the vaccinations and an acceleration of hiring,” said William Spriggs, a Howard University professor and the chief economist for the AFL-CIO. “We need that to give confidence to the people that have been sitting on the sidelines.”
There are signs that is already happening. Nearly half a million women joined the labor force in March, which economists attributed in part to the return of inperson schooling in much of the country.
“You open schools, and imagine what happens —
women return to the workforce,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist for accounting firm Grant Thornton.
Job gains in March were broad-based. The leisure and hospitality sector added 280,000 jobs as Americans returned to restaurants and resorts in greater numbers, and construction businesses added 110,000 as activity resumed after winter storms in February. Schools, both public and private, added 190,000 jobs in March.
But retailers, manufacturers and transportation companies added jobs as well, which Swonk said showed that the recovery was being driven by more than just the
reopening of shuttered businesses. Government aid has given Americans money to spend and the confidence to spend it.
Businesses, too, appear to be growing more confident. Many of the jobs added in January and February were temporary positions, but in March, temporary staffing levels were essentially flat, indicating companies were filling permanent positions instead.
Amy Glaser, senior vice president at staffing company Adecco, said that in recent weeks, a growing share of her clients had been looking for permanent employees or converting temporary hires into permanent
ones.
“Our conversations have really shifted even over the last six weeks,” she said. “We spent the last year doing a lot of worst-case-scenario planning with our clients, and now the conversation is the opposite: How do we capture the rebound to make the most effective use of it?”
When Main Event Entertainment, which runs 44 family entertainment centers in 17 states, began reopening its doors in June, business was initially slow. But in recent weeks, customers have begun to come back in greater numbers.
“It’s been a very slow, gradual improvement, and then during spring break it was a step up,” CEO Chris Morris said. “We believe there is pent-up demand. There have been a lot of missed birthday parties.”
In response, Main Event is going on a hiring spree. The company is aiming to increase its staff by about 20 percent, adding roughly 1,000 positions.
“The worst thing we could do is not be ready when our guests come in, and they have a lousy experience,” Morris said. “So we’re trying to get ahead of that curve.”
Businesses have good reason to be optimistic. Even before the latest round of stimulus checks, Americans had $1 trillion more in savings than before the pandemic — money they could now begin spending on restaurant meals, vacations and concert tickets.
About 35 percent of Americans plan to spend more on travel over the next 12 months than they do in a typical year, according to a survey conducted last month for the New York Times by online research company Surveymonkey. About 28 percent plan to spend more than usual at restaurants. And overall, close to 70 percent of adults plan to spend more than usual in at least one category, at least if the health situation allows.
“They have the money in the bank, they’re ready to spend it, but what was holding them back was not having a comfort about being able to go out,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist for Wells Fargo. “We’re getting into a critical mass of people that are feeling comfortable beginning to go out again.”