Walmart announced that they are closing 12 stores in nine states and Washington DC this year due to disappointing profits – on the same day they announced hundreds of layoffs at fulfillment centers.
The big box chain has closed a handful of stores annually for the past several years, always citing the location as “underperforming.”
The retail giant is also closing two stores in Illinois and Arkansas that were “takeout only.”
The major locations ending their run are in Washington DC, Florida, Illinois, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington State, and Wisconsin.
It comes on the same day the company announced that hundreds of employees from five branches fulfilling e-commerce orders are being asked to find jobs at other company locations within 90 days.
About 200 workers in Pedricktown, New Jersey, and hundreds more in Fort Worth, Texas; Chino, California; Davenport, Florida; and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania were laid off due to a reduction or elimination of evening and weekend shifts, the spokesman said.
The layoffs at Walmart, a leading retail company due to its size, could herald further turmoil in the US economy, which many economists believe could slide into recession this year.
Walmart announced on Thursday that they are closing 12 stores in nine states and Washington DC this year due to disappointing profits, on the same day they announced hundreds of layoffs at fulfillment centers
“We recently made workforce adjustments to better prepare for future customer needs,” Walmart said in a statement, adding that it would work closely with affected employees to find jobs in other locations.
The spokesperson said affected workers would be paid for 90 days to find jobs at other facilities, including those in Joliet, Illinois, and Lancaster, Texas, where the company has opened new high-tech e-commerce distribution centers.
Walmart has invested heavily in automation in recent years and is working with automation companies such as Knapp to reduce the number of steps employees take to process e-commerce orders from 5 to 12, which has been implemented at the Pedricktown, New Jersey location, for example .
During a post-earnings call in February, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said he was “very excited about the automation opportunity we have” with plans to increase investment in automation technology as part of the more than $15 billion investment budget. this year.
Employees laid off at the five fulfillment centers will be eligible for positions at Walmart’s 5,000 U.S. stores, which the company is increasingly using as a platform to ship orders to customers’ doorsteps, the spokesperson said.
Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States with approximately 1.7 million American employees.
Aside from Pedricktown, New Jersey, Walmart did not post a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) for the layoffs, according to a Reuters survey of labor government data.
A WARN notification is required by U.S. labor law and requires companies with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days’ notice of plant closures and mass layoffs.
It comes on the same day the company announced that hundreds of employees from five branches fulfilling e-commerce orders are being asked to find jobs at other company locations within 90 days
The layoffs at Walmart, a benchmark in the retail industry due to its size, could herald further turmoil in the US economy, which many economists believe could slide into recession this year
The spokesperson declined to call them mass layoffs and said warehouses continued to operate normally.
The company has not issued a WARN notice for the other locations because it is uncertain about the total number of employees who will ultimately be laid off and rehired, the spokesperson added.
The news comes months after the company laid off nearly 1,500 employees at an online order fulfillment center in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of a modernization plan to build warehouses with a more high-tech twist.
The spokesman said the new round of layoffs had nothing to do with the modernization plans. In January, the company raised the minimum wage by $2 to $14 an hour.
However, this still lagged behind Target and Amazon, which pay workers a starting wage of at least $15 an hour.