Walmart freezes holiday hires, cuts overnight stocker jobs

By

Rebecca Taras

Published
Sep 20, 2017

Amidst recent news that Macy’s is hiring fewer temporary holiday employees than last year comes a statement from Walmart that the company is providing additional hours for its current employees versus adding additional staff.

"These extra hours will help staff traditional roles like cashier and stocker, and newly created technology-empowered positions such as personal shoppers and Pickup associates," said Judith McKenna, Walmart's chief operating officer, in a statement. “This is the same approach we took last year, and we heard great feedback from our customers and associates,” she said.

But despite providing additional opportunities to increase income and increasing salaries over the past few years, Walmart is eliminating thousands of overnight stock positions across the U.S.—approximately 430 of its standard Neighborhood Market stores. 

The company emphasises that the employees will be given the option to move to a day shift, work at a different location, or receive a severance valued at 60 days of current earnings.

Citing a post on Walmart’s blog, “the new policy will bring workers at the Neighborhood Markets closer to the customer–shifting overnight stocking hours to the daytime and using technology to make the inventory management process easier."

But these aren’t the first changes for the discount retailer. In an effort to keep up with e-commerce giant Amazon, Walmart purchased Jet.com for $3.3 billion by cutting labor costs starting with 7,000 back-office positions last year and 1,000 corporate roles earlier this year.

According to a recent report from Reuters, these cuts are a part of Walmart’s plan to become more efficient and compete with grocery store rivals such as Whole Foods now that it’s been acquired by Amazon.