I have to buy an assortment of cheese this Christmas and besides dreading the thought of standing in a smelly place buying smelly things, I have an ethical bee in my bonnet. The person I'm buying for has only purchased from Janice Beaton and wants the same sort of thing in the same sort of box...a bunch of smelly lumps nestled together in fake hay like a smelly little manger of new born kings.
Sure it's only vacation and severance pay and some suppliers. And she's only "taking advantage of the rules available to all Americans". And she's paid for it personally to some extent. But it's dirty pool in my books to stiff your employees and then open the same business in the same place using the experience your employees helped create for you. She may get around to paying everyone back at some point. And frankly, if you try your best and fail at a business, I don't hold that against you. While employees shouldn't assume the risk of ownership, sometimes things happen. It's that she's opened up the same business in the same place. I dunno. Thoughts? I'm pretty sure one person's Bleu d'elizabeth is the same as the next one's.
I think she's getting smeared unfairly here. She paid out her employees last paychecks. That shows she's not trying to screw them. Vacation and severance is what the employees are after. And since it's hourly work it's likely only the managers who are out vacation time. Given the nature of the industry with high turnover it's unlikely that the severance would have been more than two weeks and no one gets severance in these types of closures. So really you have a few managers who are out vacation time.
This sucks but she didn't go out of her way to screw her employees. Her lease holder is probably the one she owes the most to not to mention her other vendors.
As for the new business from the outside it looks like she couldn't make the business work with the liabilities it had but the cash flow with a less punitive lease and no debt was still viable. Without these types of protections businesses wouldn't open.
I think the bottom line to me is that she paid the wages of her employees before closing. That's pretty ethical when she likely could have gotten around paying them
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I think she's getting smeared unfairly here. She paid out her employees last paychecks. That shows she's not trying to screw them. Vacation and severance is what the employees are after. And since it's hourly work it's likely only the managers who are out vacation time. Given the nature of the industry with high turnover it's unlikely that the severance would have been more than two weeks and no one gets severance in these types of closures. So really you have a few managers who are out vacation time.
I think the bottom line to me is that she paid the wages of her employees before closing. That's pretty ethical when she likely could have gotten around paying them
A couple workers have said they were owed a couple thousand bucks. That's not small change for these guys. Meanwhile Janice is opening up another store in the exact same place and lying about her involvement in it.
Asked if she is an owner of the new venture, Beaton wouldn't answer directly.
"I am, essentially, an employee of that new restaurant," she said.
"There is a new company in place. There is a whole new structure that has not got any relationship with the previous one."
Corporate registry searches, however, reveal that Mabou Cheese + Bar is a trade name belonging to a corporation named Janice Beaton Fine Cheese, Inc.
Janice Beaton is listed as the sole director of that company, which has three voting shareholders: Chinook Arch Productions Ltd. (15 per cent), George Baptist (35 per cent) and a numbered company named 1180264 Alberta Ltd. (50 per cent.)
The numbered company has just one registered shareholder: Janice Beaton.
I think that's all you need to know about this sleazeball.
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Well I don't know. Good points on both sides. I kind of always wanted to own one of those big cheese wheels you used to see in cartoons anyway. The kind you can roll down a hill. Maybe I'll do that. I think Janice can do what she did and it's fine but it doesn't sit quite well enough for me to go there and pay her for stuff. Gonna go to the Cheese Peasant....buy cheese from poor people who pay their bills I guess.
A couple workers have said they were owed a couple thousand bucks. That's not small change for these guys. Meanwhile Janice is opening up another store in the exact same place and lying about her involvement in it.
Why'd she pay her employees their final paychecks?
Why didn't she pay her employees what they were owed?
She tagged them along, didn't let them know that she was closing. They went to a meeting expecting to be greeted by their new manager. Instead they got told they were out of a job, would not receive their bonuses owed, vacation pay or any severance.
It's sleazy. She didn't wake up one day and found out she had to close, she knew it was coming for months...probably working on her next business affair considering how quickly it popped up. She strung around her employees and at the end of the day didn't pay them thousands of what they were owed. Business is business, I get it, but it doesn't expunge her from being a dirtball by not paying her employees $3000 that they were owed on...and probably relied on.
As director of the corporation that owned Farm, Beaton is personally responsible for the last six months' wages,
She was personally responsible for it...
Not to mention, if she wasn't a complete dirtball all she had to do was file bankruptcy for her corporation and the employees would have received their pay :
Quote:
"It is a personal Consumer Proposal for Janice herself as an individual, not the corporation Farm by JBFC Inc.," she wrote in an email to the former Farm workers.
"As such, the Consumer Proposal does not make you eligible for the Wage Earner Protection Program."
That program, run by the federal government, covers wages, termination pay and vacation pay for terminated employees but only when their employer declares bankruptcy or enters into receivership.
The Wage Earner Protection Program (WEPP) will protect up to $3,000 of workers’ unpaid wage and vacation pay due to a bankruptcy or receivership under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.
It is estimated that 97% of all unpaid wage claims would be satisfied in full, within the $3,000 cap.
Payment will no longer depend on the assets available in the employer’s estate.
The WEPP will provide prompt payment of unpaid wages — so that, in that period of financial crisis workers will get the pay they would otherwise have received.
Government, instead of workers, will assume the risk of receiving only partial payment of owed wages after the lengthy period needed to distribute the assets from the bankruptcy.
In making a wage claim under the WEPP, workers will be required to sign over their claim against the employer to the government so that the government can recover its costs — as fully as possible — as a creditor to the employer.
She's complete slime.
Last edited by Oling_Roachinen; 12-20-2016 at 04:54 PM.
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Not to mention, if she wasn't a complete dirtball all she had to do was file bankruptcy for her corporation and the employees would have received their pay :
If she herself filed for a consumer proposal would that dissolve her personal liabilities to the employees. As director of a company she is liable personally but if she personally is insolvent then they would just be another creditor.
