Smiths City advertises for new staff days after making 115 redundant

Tuesday, 26 May 2020

Smiths City makes a quarter of its workforce redundant as part of sale.

Just days after making 115 staff redundant, Smiths City is recruiting again.

The homewares and furniture retailer announced the redundancies on May 18 as part of its sale to Colin Neal, director of refrigerated logistics company Big Chill Distribution.

Staff were given redundancy letters on May 21.

The redundancies made up a quarter of Smiths City's work force and included staff across the country.

* Smiths City to be sold to investment company of Big Chill founder Colin Neal

Smiths City is advertising for 25 roles, days after making 115 staff redundant.

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But a Smiths City spokesman said all staff contracts were terminated as part of the businesses' sale process.

Smiths City Group was placed in receivership on Friday afternoon to help expedite the sale.

'More than 75 per cent of those employees were subsequently offered employment by the new owner, Smiths City (2020),' the spokesman said.

'As the new owner has new plans for the business, it has created a new structure.

'Not all previous employees were required in the new structure, and some new roles were also created which require different skill sets and attributes. All vacant roles are being advertised to ensure the best available people are employed in the new business,' he said.

Smith City stores in Mount Wellington, Porirua, Lower Hutt, Kapiti and Whangarei, the Invercargill clearance centre and Christchurch outlet store, will close as part of the sale.

On Monday, Smiths City (2020) posted 25 jobs to online job board Seek.

Dundas Street Employment Lawyers partner Susan Hornsby-Geluk says it would become unfair to hold an employee to account for things (unless completely outrageous) that happened outside the workplace, years previously.

Former Christchurch Smith City worker Tracey Ashton said the job adverts were a kick in the guts for the workers that had been made redundant.

She said there had been no rhyme or reason as to why some staff had been made redundant over others but none of them had been given the option to redeploy to the new roles.

Ashton had worked for the company for four years.

One of the jobs advertised on Seek was for a sales consultant, a role Ashton said she could have filled.

'I am pretty gutted that the jobs that they advertised, we weren't told about them,' she said.

'I actually want to cry, they have put us through so much.'

Employment lawyer Susan Hornsby-Geluk said companies were entitled to make decisions based on information they had at the time.

'If the decision was based on genuine business projections at the time, but the downturn has not been as bad as expected, an employer can hire new employees,' Hornsby-Geluk said.

'Having said that, where this occurs hard on the heels of having made staff redundant, the legitimacy of those redundancies will be heavily scrutinised.'

Once an employee was made redundant, they did not have any rights to preferential redeployment, she said.

'However, a refusal by an employer to consider them for re-employment could raise doubts about the legitimacy of the redundancies in the first instance.'