Walmart announced it will close 12 stores in nine states and Washington DC this year due to falling profits, the same day it announced hundreds of distribution center layoffs.
The big box chain has been closing a handful of stores annually in recent years, always citing the location as “underperforming.”
The retail giant is also closing two stores in Illinois and Arkansas that were “carry-out only.”
Major locations that finish their tour 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 workers at five facilities that fulfill e-commerce orders are being asked to find work within 90 days at other company locations.
About 200 workers in Pedricktown, New Jersey, and hundreds more in Fort Worth, Texas; Chino, Calif.; Davenport, Florida; and Bethlehem, Pa., were laid off due to a reduction or elimination of night and weekend shifts, the spokesperson said.
The layoffs at Walmart, a benchmark retailer because of its size, could be a harbinger of more turbulence in the US economy, which many economists predict could slip into a recession this year.
Walmart announced Thursday it will close 12 stores in nine states and Washington DC this year due to falling profits, the same day it announced hundreds of layoffs at fulfillment centers.
“We recently adjusted staffing levels to better prepare for future customer needs,” Walmart said in a statement, adding that it would work closely with affected associates to find jobs elsewhere.
The spokesperson said the affected workers would be paid for 90 days to find work 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 been investing heavily in automation in recent years, partnering with automation companies like Knapp to help reduce the number of steps employees need to process e-commerce orders from 12 to five, which has been implemented at its Pedricktown. , New Jersey location, for example.
In a post-earnings call in February, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said he was “very excited about the automation opportunity that we have” with plans to increase investments in automation technology as part of his spending budget. capital of more than $15 billion this year.
Laid-off workers at the five fulfillment centers will be eligible for positions at Walmart’s 5,000 US stores, which the company has been increasingly using as a platform to ship orders to customers’ doors, the spokesperson said.
Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States with about 1.7 million American workers.
Outside of Pedricktown, New Jersey, Walmart did not publish a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN) notice for the layoffs, according to a Reuters review of government labor data.
US labor law requires a WARN notice and requires companies with 100 or more employees to give 60 days notice of plant closings and layoffs.
It comes on the same day the company announced that hundreds of workers at five facilities fulfilling e-commerce orders are being asked to find work within 90 days at other company locations.
The layoffs at Walmart, a benchmark retailer because of its size, could be a harbinger of more turbulence in the US economy, which many economists predict could slip into a recession this year.
The spokesperson declined to call them mass layoffs, saying the stores were continuing to operate as normal.
The company did not issue a WARNING notice for the other locations as it is unsure of the total number of employees that will eventually be laid off and rehired, the spokesperson added.
The news comes months after the company laid off nearly 1,500 workers at an Atlanta, Georgia, online fulfillment center as part of a modernization plan to build warehouses with a more high-tech twist.
The spokesman said the new round of layoffs was not related to its modernization plans. In January, the company raised the minimum wage from $2 to $14 an hour.
This, however, was still lagging behind Target and Amazon, which pay workers a starting wage of at least $15 an hour.
