After Firing, More Heat for Sears
Ex-worker was Critic of Company
By Becky Yerak - T=
ribune
staff reporter -
January 12, 2005
A tool saleswoman at a
Sears, Roebuck and Co. store in
Carmen Liggett, who f=
or the
past four years worked up to 35 hours a week in Sears' tool department, has
been a vocal critic of Sears at its annual shareholder meetings and in other
venues.
Working at the Sears =
store
at Lafayette Square Mall on Dec. 30, Liggett, 52, said she was summoned to a
meeting by a manager and told that Sears appreciated her service but determ=
ined
that she was no longer needed.
Liggett said she aske=
d for
an explanation but wasn't given one. Sears cut her loose, she said, despite=
a
spotless work record. In fact, she said she was named her store's employee =
of
the month in September and received a 6 percent raise.
Sears declined to com=
ment
on Liggett's claims.
"We respect the privacy of current and former employees and can't discuss this personnel ma= tter further," a spokesman said. <= o:p>
Liggett said her husb=
and,
Doug, was fired by Sears in October 2002 after more than 30 years at the
company. His last job was running a
"They said he fa=
iled
to answer the phone in three rings or less 100 percent of the time,"
Liggett said.
At last May's shareho=
lder
meeting, the couple spoke up at least four times.
Early in the meeting,
Carmen Liggett criticized everything from the compensation of directors to =
the
changing pay and commission structures of store workers.
During the
question-and-answer period at the end of the meeting, Doug Liggett compared
Sears Chief Executive Officer Alan Lacy to both the captain of the Titanic =
and
Captain Ahab, the "Moby Dick" character doomed in his effort to s=
lay
the great white whale. He also called Lacy's ef=
forts
to turn around Sears a "monumental failure."
Carmen Liggett kept u=
p the heat
by attending an employee party last month in
Also, in a Dec. 2 pos=
ting
on Proxymatters.com, Liggett wrote a scathing review of Sears' management. =
"Lacy and the bo=
ard of
directors should be charged with breach of fiduciary duty," she said. =
She
criticized the compensation that he'll receive after the Kmart deal.
In a recent Securitie=
s and
Exchange Commission filing, Sears said that when Lacy takes over the new Se=
ars
Holdings Corp.--the combined entity of Kmart and Sears--his base salary will
increase to at least $1.5 million from $1 million in 2003. And if he is
terminated without cause, he receives two times his annual base salary and
target bonus, plus accelerated vesting of equity awards and two more years =
of
benefits
Since her firing, Lig=
gett
has tried to rally visitors of various chat rooms to e-mail statements of
support to newspapers.
In other Sears
personnel news, the company confirmed Tuesday that it has eliminated 30 of =
900
jobs in its information technology department in a cost-cutting move. The 30
laid-off employees worked in "application services management,"
meaning they helped maintain Sears' IT systems.
Last March, Sears
outsourced 260 IT jobs.