Posted on: Friday, April 29, 2005
Sears handing out pink slips at headquarters
Associated Press
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. — Hundreds of employees at Sears Holdings Corp. headquarters are getting pink slips this week as the retailer carries out layoffs it warned would result when the company was formed by the March acquisition of Sears, Roebuck and Co. by Kmart Holding Corp.
George Thompson • Associated Press Most of the cuts at Sears' corporate campus in this town 30 miles northwest of Chicago are expected to be made by the end of this week, the spokesman said.
Similar reductions are taking place among Kmart's headquarters staff of 2,000 in Troy, Mich. Some workers are being given the option of relocating to Hoffman Estates, and only a few hundred jobs are expected to remain after the two headquarters are consolidated and based in Illinois.
Asked about specifics of the Troy layoffs, Kmart spokesman Stephen Pagnani declined to comment and referred questions to Sears Holdings headquarters.
Sears, the nation's third-largest retailer, wants to save $300 million by gaining purchasing power and cutting staff and other expenses in the wake of the $12.3 billion deal.
Sears informed local, state and federal officials last month that at least 500 workers — the minimum threshold for alerting the federal government — would be let go from the headquarters staff of about 4,000. Company spokesman Chris Brathwaite declined yesterday to disclose the total or comment on published reports that, citing unidentified Sears sources, put it at 1,000 or higher.
Beth Cozza, Traci Albrecht, Sandy Gramkowski and a woman who did not want to be identified, from left, found a reason to laugh after receiving layoff notices from Sears yesterday in Hoffman Heights, Ill.
