Everlane ended this week with several hundred fewer workers as it struggles to cope with the shutdown of its retail business over measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Although the California company has spent the last two weeks e-mailing customers about reduced prices for its brand, made up of casual basics, and striking a positive tone with employees, in the end it decided to layoff and furlough more than 200 workers, including retail and those operating backend functions.
A group of Everlane workers, non-store employees involved in customer experience online, had formed a union in December and wrote of the sudden layoffs on Twitter. The group claimed that “every member of our union committee was fired.” The union had not yet been recognized by company leadership, but they claimed to have only recently formalized a request for recognition.
“Anyone that showed public support of the union with a union slack avatar was fired,” the group wrote. “Everlane is using this pandemic as an excuse to gut our movement.”

After backlash from temp workers getting fired, the social team at Everlane was given instructions to remove the phrase “We’re in this together” from posts. We’re not in this together. Everlane just wants to

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