By Sami Mirza
Altavista Journal News Correspondent
United Furniture Industries fired thousands of employees overnight last week on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, according to multiple reports from national and international media publications. UFI owns a number of home furnishing brands and operates under the brand name of longtime Altavista fixture Lane Furnitures.
According to the New York Post, Lane fired all 2,700 of its employees via email and text, instructing them not to show up to work the next day, Tuesday, Nov. 22. Industry publication FurnitureToday published a copy of the message, which told workers that the layoffs are “expected to be permanent.”
“At the instruction of the Board of Directors of United Furniture Industries, Inc., and all subsidiaries (the “Company”), we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances the Company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately, on November 21, 2022, with the exception of over-the-road drivers that are out on delivery,” the message stated in part.
The over-the-road drivers in the process of making deliveries were told they would be paid for the rest of the week and ordered to return their equipment and inventory to the company.
Lane also informed employees that they would no longer receive work-related health insurance under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA. COBRA is a 1985 law designed to help continue work-related insurance after “voluntary or involuntary job loss” among other circumstances, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Late that very same night, Nov. 22, a freshly fired employee of Lane, Toria Neal, filed a federal lawsuit against the company in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.” According to The Guardian, Neal’s complaint claims that Lane violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988, which requires employers to give employees at least 60 days notice in advance of mass layoffs or a company-wide shutdown.
This is not the first indication of concerns at the company. In June, Lane’s CEO Mike Watson left, and in July, the company fired 300 employees and closed facilities in High Point, North Carolina and Amory, Mississippi.
“Our industry is experiencing a drastic decrease in consumer demand,” CEO Todd Evans told FurnitureToday at the time. “Our inventory levels remain high and new orders from our customers remain slow.”
Lane was started as the “Standard Red Cedar Chest Company” in Altavista in 1912 by father-and-son duo John and Ed Lane, according to the company’s website. The company expanded from cedar chests to tables and casegoods in the 1950s, and in 1972 purchased “Action Industries” in Tupelo, Mississippi. In the years following, Lane and its holdings were acquired by a number of larger companies, eventually getting sold by Heritage Home Group to UFI in 2017.
Altavista’s connection to Lane was severed more than 20 years ago: the company closed its original plant in 2001. FurnitureToday reported at the time that the move was designed to concentrate the company’s operations in Mississippi.
Since then, the plant has stood mostly vacant, though in 2020 the Altavista Journal reported that the Town of Altavista received a $300,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to assess the site and clear it of any hazardous materials for redevelopment and remediation.
County records show that the company sold the plant in 2003 to North Carolina-based real-estate firm Schwarz & Schwarz for $450,000, which has held the land ever since.
