Walmart announced its plans on Friday to lay off about 2,300 workers, or roughly two percent of the total workforce at its Sam's Club warehouse unit, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Bill Durling, a Sam's Club spokesman, said in a telephone interview that the layoffs will be a combinations of salaried assistant managers at the stores with weak sales and hourly employees. The chain will also be eliminating telephone attendants.
"We realized we had pretty much the same club structure, whether a club had $50 million in revenue or $100 million in revenue," Durling said about assistant managers. "What we're trying to do is rebalance our resources."
Durling said that Sam's Club has about 116,000 employees and that the recent layoffs will affect about four employees per store. Workers will be given 60 days to find another job within the company or Walmart. If they are unsuccessful, though, workers will be "eligible for severance."
The retailing giant, membership-only club noted that this is its biggest round of layoffs since 2010, when the company announced the lay off of 10,000 workers "as it moved to outsource food demonstrations at its stores."
According to the Associated Press, Sam's Club is striving to compete with other big name retailers such as Costco Wholesale Corp. and online opponent Amazon.com.
The Wall Street Journal reported Walmart's recent announcement is the latest in a string of job losses at US retailers. In recent weeks, both Target and Macy's have also announced layoffs following a disappointing holiday shopping season.
Target announced that it would cut approximately 475 jobs of their 361,000 employees after a recent breach of customer data made headlines, causing several lawsuits and affecting as many as 110 million people.
USA Today reported that J.C. Penney announced that they will be eliminating 2,000 jobs and closing 33 of their stores. In addition, Macy's said they will lay off 2,500 employees, or 1.4 percent, of its U.S. workforce despite solid results from their holiday sales.
Walmart is based in Bentonville, Ark.
