Walmart Will Lay Off 2,300 Sam’s Club Workers

[mystery-ak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/business/walmart-will-lay-off-2300-sams-club-workers.html?_r=1

Walmart Will Lay Off 2,300 Sam’s Club Workers

By ELIZABETH A. HARRISJAN. 24, 2014


Walmart announced on Friday that about 2,300 Sam’s Club employees would be laid off, the latest in a drumbeat of retail job cuts to start off the new year.

Bill Durling, a Sam’s Club spokesman, said the layoffs would target a combination of salaried assistant managers and hourly employees. Certain positions, like telephone attendants, will be eliminated.

“We realized we had pretty much the same club structure whether a club had $50 million in revenue or $100 million in revenue,” Mr. Durling said of the distribution of assistant managers. “What we’re trying to do is balance our resources.”

Sam’s Club has about 116,000 employees, Mr. Durling said, and the job cuts will affect about four employees a store. Employees will have 60 paid days to find another job at the company. If they are not successful, they will be eligible for severance.

Sam’s Club will be opening at least 15 new stores over the course of the next fiscal year, which begins in February.

This week, Target announced that it would cut approximately 475 jobs. The retailer, which employs 361,000 people, has been roiled by an enormous breach of customer data that has affected as many as 110 million people. 

Just last week, J. C. Penney announced job cuts of its own, saying it would close 33 stores and cut about 2,000 jobs. This was widely seen as a symptom of that company’s continued struggles, after several tumultuous years of flux in its management and its strategy.

Even Macy’s, which has been performing better than many of its competitors in recent months, announced a round of layoffs at the beginning of the year. It said the company would lay off 2,500 employees, despite relatively solid holiday sales results.

Walmart, the parent company of Sam’s Club, has not yet released its holiday sales figures, but its recent financial performance has been underwhelming. Walmart beat analyst expectations in the third quarter, but the company trimmed its earnings forecast, saying continued economic difficulties among its core customers were affecting the retailer’s bottom line.

Excluding fuel, sales at Sam’s Club stores open for at least a year were up only 1.1 percent during the third quarter, the most recent period Walmart has reported.

At Sam’s Club’s main rival, however, data for the holiday season showed that Costco enjoyed a healthy sales period.

[Oceander]

Anyone want to bet that, as and when these companies performance picks up, new hires will be part time, and under the Obastardcare weekly hours limit?

[mountaineer]

I suspect Obastardcare has a lot to do with all of these layoffs in the retail business.

[Oceander]

I suspect Obastardcare has a lot to do with all of these layoffs in the retail business.

Absolutely, which is why I'm curious about the number of full timers in these layoffs.  Since the Obastardcare requirements don't apply to employees who work less than 30 hours a week, employers can protect themselves from some of the impositions by simply replacing full time staff with part time staff.  In fact, if your full timers work 40 hours a week, you could replace 3 full timers with 4 part timers and still get the same amount of work - 120 hours' worth.