Sears announced this month that an undisclosed portion of the struggling department store chain’s 90,000 retirees would be losing their life insurance benefits.
The dreaded news came just a month after Sears chairman Eddie Lampert saved the department store from bankruptcy by having a $5.2 billion bid approved, allowing about 40,000 current Sears employees to keep their jobs.Olbrysh doesn’t know exactly how many of the 90,000 former employees would be affected by the decision, but a recent benefits report detailed that the company had paid about $16.6 million in premiums for eligible retirees in 2017, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Hints of the drastic move emerged in October, when Sears requested bankruptcy protection. At the time, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. won a lawsuit to take over retirees’ two pension plans from the retailer. Life insurance was the last benefit retirees had with Sears, which offered its workers a coveted benefits package in its heyday.