MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Location: file:///C:/2C6394EF/SearsFiresWorkerwhoPlannedtoChastiseCEO.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Sears Fires Worker who Planned to Chastise CEO

Sears Fires Worker who Pl= anned to Chastise CEO
By Sandra Guy - Business Reporter - Chicago Sun-Times
January 11, 2005

A Sears Roebuck and C= o. employee was fired after she made public her plan to criticize the company = for the second straight year at its shareholders' meeting in March.

Carmen Liggett, who w= ith her husband lambasted Sears CEO Alan Lacy at last year's shareholders' meet= ing, said Monday that she was told by a Sears store manager that her services we= re no longer needed.

"It took less th= an two minutes," Liggett, 52, said of her firing Dec. 30 at the Sears store in the Lafayette Square Mall in I= ndianapolis.

She said none of her = bosses would tell her who authorized her firing or provide reasons for it. Liggett said her work record was spotless during her four years as an hourly custom= er sales associate; that she received a 6 percent pay raise in November, and that she was named "Employee of the Month" in September. Ligg= ett worked 30 to 35 hours a week, but was never made a full-time employee.

= Liggett's direct supervisor at the Sears store, an assistant store manager, said Monday that Liggett was an excellent employee, but that he could provide no further information.

= Liggett's husband, Doug, was fired as a= Sears Auto Center manager in O= ctober 2002, after a 37-year tenure with the retailer, = for what Liggett said was his inability to answer the telephone "100 perce= nt of the time."

A spokesman at Sears' headquarters said Monday that the company cannot discuss personnel matters. "We respect the privacy of all current and former employees," he said.

During the first two = weeks of December, Carmen Liggett had posted online criticisms of Lacy and his ro= le in "setting up" Sears for its merger with Kmart Holding Corp., a = bad move in Liggett's opinion.

She also told a Dec. 7 holiday dinner audience of Sears retirees and ve= teran employees at a Golden Corral restaurant in Indianapolis that she intended to seek = other shareholders' proxy votes so she could voice her criticisms for longer than= the three minutes allotted at the upcoming shareholders' meeting.

Liggett said she beli= eves Lacy has no business getting a lucrative new job with the merged Sears-Kmart= because of what she believes is his poor leadership of the Hoffman Estates-based Sears.

She alleged that Lacy= sold off Sears' credit-card business, its most profitable division, to weaken the retailer and pave the way for its $11 billion acquisition by Kmart and its chairman, Edward Lampert Jr., who will become chairman of the new Sears Holdings Corp. <= /p>

= Liggett's Dec. 2 online posting at a shareholder discussion Web site, ProxyMatters.com, said, "Lacy and the board of directors should be charged with breach of fiduciary duty." <= /span>

She called Lacy a "monumental failure" and questioned the benefits he will receive after the merger.

Lacy is scheduled to receive a 50 percent pay raise, as well as increased grants of stock options and restricted stock, when he becomes CEO and vice chairman of the merged company.

Liggett also question= ed the setup in which stock options held by Sears executives will convert to cash = when the Sears-Kmart merger closes, but holders of Sears' actual stock have a ch= oice of either cash or stock in the new Sears Holdings Corp.

Liggett said Monday t= hat she and her husband still intend to speak at the Sears shareholders' meetin= g in March. No date for the meeting has been set, and no proxy has been filed.