Paul Bass Photo
Jisu Sheen helps customer Monday at soon-to-close Artist & Craftsman.
Jisu Sheen refuses to sign away her rights in return for four weeks of severance pay. Including to a company she supposedly “owns.”
Sheen and her colleagues at Artist & Craftsman Supply need to find other jobs soon because the store at 821 – 5 Chapel St. plans to close in March. It’s currently holding a 30 percent-off clearance sale.
The company informed its mailing lists of the decision in a Monday email.
“It’s been a tough location for us for a while,” chain Director of Retail Operations Trevor Webster told the Independent. “We could never really get enough sales to make it all make sense.”
The company’s human resources department separately informed New Haven employees that their last day of work will be March 31. Six people work there.
“I’m sad” about the closing, Sheen said at the store Monday. Fellow store employees Shannon Mora Sanders, Kaelynne Hernandez, and Melissa Villa echoed the sentiment: They have liked working at the fine-art outlet. They enjoy meeting fellow artists. They appreciate the at-cost supply discounts for their own arts. They appreciate the flexible hours. They enjoy the staff camaraderie.
But they said they don’t appreciate the letter from company HQ offering terms for a severance pay agreement. In return for four weeks’ pay upon leaving, they would have to sign away their rights to disparage the company or even the terms of the agreement. (The salespeople said they earn from $15 to $15.75 an hour.)
Sheen for one is working on a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint contesting the non-disclosure/disparagement terms.
Section 5 of the agreement threatens that the company will hold the employee “criminally or civilly liable” for “disclosure of confidential information” about Artist & Craftsman, including “in confidence to [a] government official [or] attorney” or in a legal complaint.
Section 6 requires the employee to promise never to “say, write, express, communicate or relate anything disparaging, defamatory or false” about the company.
“I don’t want to give up that right,” she said. “I want to make it clear the offer is unlawful, which can help workers at other stores.”
Sheen cited a Feb. 21, 2023 decision by the NLRB in a case called McLaren Macomb related to severance agreements. The NLRB ruled in the case that companies can’t include non-disparagement clauses or prohibitions on discussing terms in severance offers.
“The employer’s offer is itself an attempt to deter employees from exercising their statutory rights, at a time when employees may feel they must give up their rights in order to get the benefits provided in the agreement,” the NLRB stated at the time.
Artist & Craftsman is a national chain based in Portland, Maine, with 21 retail outlets as well as an online store.
New Haven Manager Charles Zavelle referred questions to the national company. Webster said he doesn’t handle the legal or human resources end of the company; no one from those departments had returned a call to the Independent by publication time.
The first step for the NLRB will be assigning an investigator to examine Sheen’s claim.
Employment law expert Joshua Goodbaum told the Independent Monday that Sheen is “reading McClare McComb correctly. It prohibits nondisparagement or nondisclosure clauses in separation agreements.”
The decision does not bar employers from requiring employees to sign away the right to file disability or civil rights or other labor claims in return for severance, said Goodbaum, a partner at the Orange Street firm Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald & Pirrotti. The Artist & Craftsman agreement does require that release of claims as well.
“Is that the final word on this subject? Nobody knows yet. The law could be tested in the federal courts,” Goodbaum said of the non-disclosure/disparagement issue. An appeal by the company could go first to the U.S. Court of Appeals, then theoretically to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If that happens — the company would be spending its “owners’” money against the owners. Artist & Craftsman Supply is technically a worker-owned company. “It just means we have stock. We don’t have decision-making” power, one of the employees noted. She said their suggestions of alternative new locations for the store (in Erector Square and in Amity) were ignored.
“We cannot thank our staff enough for their loyalty, dedication, and hard work. Over the coming weeks, we will be working closely with the New Haven team to support their employment during the closing process and help transition to their next endeavors,” the company wrote in its email blast to customers Monday.
That produced a chuckle among the employees at the New Haven store.
“No higher-ups from the company even asked us if we wanted employment help,” Sheen said.
One employee, Villa, said she has lined up a post-Artist & Craftsman gig as an studio assistant for an artist she met at the store. Sanders said she plans to focus more on developing her own Dreamy Punk Shop line. Hernandez and Sheen design and sell work as well. The store may be closing, but the dreams hatched there will live on.
