Borders laid off 742 employees today, cutting less than three percent of the bookseller’s total workforce. 679 of the cuts hit Borders Superstores around the nation, and 63 jobs were eliminated at Waldenbooks Specialty Retail.
The press release called it a restructuring of “superstore management structure,” noting that no employee was fired at the “general manager level” at the individual stores. Most stores lost at least one lower level employee, cuts that included sales managers, inventory managers, training supervisors, and merchandise supervisors.
Borders Group CEO Ron Marshall explained the cuts: “As we’ve said in the past, no one likes to eliminate jobs, but reducing the number of leadership positions in our stores was a necessary step as we streamline and focus our payroll investment on the sales floor, where we actively engage with customers and meet their needs — that’s what our business is all about.”