Former Spring Air employee sues company
Claims it failed to provide notice of shutdown
Larry Thomas -- Furniture Today, May 12, 2009
TAMPA, Fla. — A former employee of the shuttered Spring Air mattress factory here has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court accusing the bedding producer of violating federal law by failing to provide 60 days notice of the factory shutdown.
In the suit, former employee Jared Azzata claims the company violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, and should pay employees 60 days' worth of wages and benefits.
Azzata is seeking to have the case certified as a class action suit, which would allow former employees at all the shuttered factories to join him as plaintiffs.
The bedding producer unexpectedly closed its nine corporate-owned factories last week after a proposed management buyout deal collapsed — a move that put an estimated 800 to 1,000 people out of work and sent retailers scrambling to replace scheduled Spring Air shipments.
Three independent Spring Air licensees in the United States and two in Canada remain in business, however.
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I, too, am a former employee of Spring Air and just like you i was working for then for 2 years , I was laid off without prior notice. On Monday, May 4, at approximately 8am, I showed up at work - building located on Falkenburg Dr. in Brandon to find that myself,and all my former partners and they obligated to give us a notice of 60 days in advance an d i right now without no job and my bills are pilling uppppp . Thank you. Josue Santana
JOSUE SANTANA - 2009-18-5 21:39:11 EDT -
Since Spring Air was not able to gain funding to continue doing business the WARN act may not apply. See the excpet from the US Department of Labor
The exceptions to 60-day notice are:
(1) Faltering company. This exception, to be narrowly construed, covers situations where a company has sought new capital or business in order to stay open and where giving notice would ruin the opportunity to get the new capital or business, and applies only to plant closings;
john z - 2009-16-5 14:08:26 EDT -
the way that this people close the company was not the right way to doit they supost to let us now few month before because i have family and right now i cant find a job and i can belive i was there 5 year and this company close and the bad moment when the economy is bad right now and is hard to pay my bills and take care my family.
ricardo manuel santana - 2009-13-5 20:18:37 EDT -
Spring Air is going to lose on this WARN deal, and the owners can be held personally liable, as they should be. This is going to be fun to watch. I really feel for the employees that got burned. Spring Air has been over-priced and under-built for a long time.
Sir Bag A Lot - 2009-13-5 11:11:00 EDT -
I, too, am a former employee of Spring Air and just like you, I was laid off without prior notice. On Monday, May 4, at approximately 8am, I showed up at work - building located on Falkenburg Dr. in Brandon to find that myself, along with all the other employees were not able to enter the building because the Human Resources Director was blocking us from going inside. She had a clipboard in her hand and stated that we had two choices...either move to Texas or Ohio, which were the only two plants open at that time (both plants closed the following day, May 5) or file for unemployment. There was no severence offered and no prior notice or warning given to us. In fact, one month earlier (April, 2009), upper managment reassured all of us in a meeting that there were going to be absolutely no layoffs and to "be prepared to work a lot of hours" in the very near future due to us landing some big accounts (Mattress Giant, etc). Please let me know which law firm you are working with so I can be a part of the lawsuit, as well. Thank you.
Samuel L. Johnson, Jr.
Samuel L. Johnson, Jr. - 2009-12-5 19:38:03 EDT
Spring Air to focus on local markets
06/02/2009Spring Air still in limbo
05/17/2009Spring Air hires Spitzer, Frame
07/06/2009
