Failing businesses should help employees find jobs

Madison Diemart
Staff Writer

As some of you may have heard, Herberger’s in the River Hills Mall is closing soon. Herberger’s is a chain of Bon-Ton, a retail store that has been in business for over 150 years. It is supposedly closing because of the increase in online shopping

Now because the store is closing, my coworkers and I will be out of a job in about ten weeks- or less, depending on when they get rid of the remaining merchandise. But we are lucky; our failing business is helping us find jobs by working with other stores in the mall, but many businesses are not like that.

If a business is failing, its job should be helping the employees find another job after the business closes. It is not the employee’s fault that the business was failing in the first place. The least the business could do is give them good references or work with other businesses around them, like Herberger’s is.

If my coworkers and I apply to stores that are working with Herberger’s, we immediately get an interview and good references from the store’s managers. From there, it is up to us. Even if we don’t apply to one of those businesses, our managers have promised to give us amazing references.

This should be the standard of any business that closes. There are a lot of businesses that are failing or close to it. If businesses don’t help their employees with finding a job, it shows that those employees were not important to the business in the first place. It is also unfair to the workers because like I said, it is not their fault that the business is closing. For example, Herberger’s is closing because they are almost 1.7 billion dollars in debt, but that was not because of the workers. Our management knows this.

One of my friends worked at a diner that closed down after a few years of being in business and was never told by her employer if he’d give her a good reference or even if he found job listings for her. In fact, he didn’t speak to her until it was her last day on the job. From there, she had a hard time finding a job and she shouldn’t have.

She is just one example of what many people are experiencing in the digital age. It should be the job of the employer to help their employees to the best of their ability. With online shopping becoming such a huge thing, many retail businesses are closing up shop. This puts a lot of people out of jobs for no good reason and there should be help for them.

Photo: FILE- In this Feb. 23, 2018, file photo, customers enter a Bon-Ton store, which is scheduled to close, in Concord, N.H. Two liquidation firms are the victors of an auction for The Bon-Ton Stores company’s assets, after the retailer failed to find a bidder willing to continue operating the business. A bankruptcy court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, April 18, to approve the sale and liquidation details. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)