US e-commerce major Walmart Inc’s job cuts at five US e-commerce fulfilment centers will affect more than 2,000 positions, citing regulatory filings news agency Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. This move will impacted Walmart’s employees may find other roles at the company, according to the report.
The losses include more than 1,000 positions at a warehouse in Fort Worth, Texas, the state’s workforce commission said on Monday. The retail giant is also anticipating a reduction of almost 600 jobs at a Pennsylvania fulfillment center, 400 in Florida and about 200 in New Jersey. An additional reduction is planned in California.
The regulatory filings add precision to the staffing cuts at the Walmart warehouses, which the company confirmed last month without quantifying.
The e-commerce giant is also growing in some areas as it adjusts its stores and fulfillment centers to handle more online orders, a spokesman said in an email. That may allow the company to reshuffle some workers to other jobs rather than cut them.
As a result, the net impact on total employment at Walmart, the largest private-sector employer in the US, remains uncertain. The company has avoided the kind of mass layoffs underway at rival Amazon.com Inc., which said last month it would eliminate a further 9,000 jobs in addition to 18,000 recent cuts.
Meanwhile, another US-based tech giant Apple Inc. is cutting down a small number of roles within its corporate retail teams, citing sources privy to the development news agency Reuters reported on Tuesday. According to the report, this is the first known internal job elimination since Apple embarked on a belt-tightening effort last year.
The sources told the news agency the company is shedding positions in what it calls its development and preservation teams. Those groups are responsible for the construction and upkeep of Apple retail stores and other facilities around the world.