Hundreds of Walmart workers are being asked to find jobs within 90 days at other Walmart locations, a spokesperson at Reuters confirmed. 200 of these workers are at Pedricktown, NJ, with hundreds more at Fort Worth, Texas, Chino, California, Davenport, Florida, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The reduction and/or elimination of evening and weekend shifts is to blame, as Walmart reportedly can not afford to staff so many workers.
Mass layoffs are not new to Walmart’s current financial state. The retail giant has been facing serious issues over the years with not only theft, but also with the growing competition between online retailers. Amazon and other huge tech multinational companies have grown exponentially, blowing once dominating American companies, like Walmart, straight out of the water.
A spokesperson for Walmart said in a statement: “We recently adjusted staffing levels to better prepare for the future needs of customers.” Additionally saying they would work closely with recently laid-off employees to help in their job search at other locations. Impacted workers would also be paid for 90 days, the spokesperson goes on to say, in hopes they’ll be able to find work at other Walmart facilities. The company has just opened up new high-tech e-commerce centers for distribution.
The workers will be eligible for positions at nearly 5,000 stores spread across the United States, which the company has been utilizing as a base platform to ship orders from their locations to a customer’s doorstep. Walmart is currently the largest private employer in the country, having amassed about 1.7 million people to their workforce.
This unfortunate news comes just months after the retail giant let go of nearly 1,500 workers from an Atlanta Pick-Up location as part of their plan to modernize and build warehouses with a more technologically advanced spin.