CVS to Cut 100 Jobs

It looks like there are going to be about 100 job cuts to a distribution center for the noticeable pharmacy CVS. The company has announced that it will be getting rid of between 100 and 115 jobs when the job cuts come to the Keystone Business Park facility, which has been run by the company since they took it over in 2008. Since then the company has been employing about 600 workers at the facility, so this loss will represent the losses of about one sixth of the overall jobs at the facility. The job cuts are all being made to workers on the late and swing shifts, who have been experiencing reduced hours for the last couple of weeks anyway.  So in the long run the workers may have already been looking for new jobs in order to make up the difference.

As these cuts will be enough to qualify as a mass layoff action , the company will have to deal with some special notification issues. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” As you can see this is more than enough in the way of job cuts to qualify as a mass layoff action. The nature of the layoffs should give the workers some extra time to prepare for the complete loss of their jobs.

This is not the first time that a CVS venture has gone south in recent months. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of the ill fated 360 Beauty line that the company launched here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed on that total cutback, “…Beauty 360, which is run by CVS but boasts a modern design and a focus on high-end cosmetics. About four years ago these stores began to launch in smaller markets across the nation. Not places like New York or San Francisco, but small towns all across the nation that did not have a lot of competition around them. Two of those places were the towns of Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley. They, along with the 23 other towns that have these locations, will find that on May 19^th they are shut down and all of the workers at these stores will be out of a job.” So who knows, maybe these things are all signs of what is to come, but for now the company is giving no indication of greater cuts at this time. Though for the time being the company seems stable its employees may want to watch the news for the loss of other company assets.