According to reports, the owner of United Furniture Industries (UFI) after firing 2,700 workers ‘disappeared’.
Details of the report via the New York Post;
The owner of United Furniture Industries — which last week fired 2,700 workers through texts and emails while they slept — has disappeared after squabbling with the company’s board and bankers over whether to file for bankruptcy, The Post has learned.
David Belford, a wealthy Ohio businessman, has kept mum since the layoffs of his entire workforce in Mississippi, North Carolina and California in the days before Thanksgiving — despite efforts by lenders and lawyers representing axed workers to reach UFI, according to multiple sources.
“No one has heard from the owner. He’s not returning anyone’s phone calls. It’s such a horrible situation,” one source with knowledge of the situation told The Post.
The Post has made several attempts to contact Belford. One attorney representing hundreds of laid off employees in Mississippi, Philip Hearn, said rumors are swirling among former employees that Belford had jetted off to Paris after the firings.
The board of the Tupelo, Miss.-based company held an emergency meeting on Nov. 20 and made a decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But the next day, Belford nixed the plan, according to Hearn, who is representing more than 600 UFI employees in Mississippi, including many senior-level workers.
“Belford said ‘We are not going forward with a Chapter 11,’” according to Hearn. “It sounds like the management team came up with a plan to save the company and Belford said, ‘That’s a wrap — not doing it.’”
UFI was highly leveraged and needed additional capital, sources tell The Post.
One fired human resource worker, Bill Burke — who was hired three weeks before the mass layoffs — continues to field questions from frantic workers about how to get new health care insurance. UFI had given him a company cell phone that hasn’t been disconnected.
“I’m answering it from my home,” Burke told The Post. “My future is just as uncertain as everyone else’s.”
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