Walmart Laying Off 2,300 Sam’s Club Workers

(Ryan)

In a move intended to thin the herd of too many assistant managers, Walmart announced over the weekend that it will be laying off 2,300 employees of its Sam’s Club warehouse stores, and that about half of those being let go are salaried assistant managers.

These layoffs only represent about 2% of the 116,000 Sam’s Club employees around the country. A rep for the company explains to the Chicago Tribune that some of its stores just had too many assistant managers.

“We’re rightsizing the number of managers per club, aligning it more appropriately to the revenue of the club,” explains the rep. Until now, most Sam’s Clubs had about the same number of employees, regardless of a particular club’s sales.

“It made things easier to manage, and there was a consistency, but we realized it was holding back some of our clubs that didn’t have enough resources and others that had too many resources,” says the company rep. “We’re trying to rebalance our resources to set ourselves up to grow more in the future.”

Since only about half of those being left go are management level, the rest of the layoffs will come from hourly employees, including some in telephone service who will be replaced by computers.

All laid-off workers will continue to get their regular salary for 60 days and will have the opportunity to apply for other jobs within the Walmart world. If an affected worker can’t find a position at Walmart, they are eligible for severance.

This is just the latest in a string of layoff announcements at large national retailers. Macy’s is cutting its workforce by 2,500, JCPenney is closing 33 stores and laying off around 2,500, and Target recently let 475 employees go at its Minneapolis headquarters.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist