Warehouse Group's raft of store closures is just part of normal business, the company's chief executive told 1 NEWS in an interview today as more than 1000 jobs hang in the balance.
The New Zealand retailer has today announced it would be closing six more of its stores, on top of the three closures it had already announced.
The Noel Leeming Henderson clearance centre and Tokoroa store, The Warehouse Whangaparāoa, Johnsonsville and Dunedin Central stores and Warehouse Stationery Te Awamutu store are all on the chopping block.
Warehouse Group also announced today it would be moving to an agile operating model which will see up to 130 jobs cut at The Warehouse Group head office.
All up, CEO Nick Grayston says there could be up to 1080 jobs on the line.
Mr Grayston told 1 NEWS the changes were already in the works, but Covid-19 accelerated things.
“It's really bringing forward plans that we already had. We’d been working on this transition to agile for about 18 months,” he says.
“Covid just accelerated it. If I break it down, the store closures are part of normal business for a retailer. The change to agile is something that we proactively want to do because we need to.”
Mr Grayston says the job cuts are all subject to consultation, which has started today in the company's head office and will start in the next couple weeks for the stores. Most of the jobs on the chopping block are likely to be in the "red stores".
He says there "could be up to 1080" job cuts, which is around 540 full time equivalents.
"With the stores that are closing we will do our best to redeploy people into other stores," he says.
"With regards to head office, the nature of the work is changing... Many people who were managers before will actually be doing the job."
He says the company is trying to engage with the union, but has not had any success just yet.
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