I can tell you the honest truth, because I honestly know. That is all I can say.
John Mackey's & Walter Robbs's email this morning was was written in such a misleading manner with little information on what is about to go down these upcoming weeks. In addition, your STLs are reading a script where the overall message is: not to believe everything in the media and don't spread low morale. Regions have made different decisions on some store based decisions, but here are the facts and some are just sad.
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1500 jobs, maybe if they are lucky will be all that will actually leave the company. If it was actually losing their position it would be in the high thousands to 10,000 depending on your labor cuts that are also coming.
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All Marketing TL's in the company will be going metro. So, for some 1 person will now have to cover 4 stores. They all have to apply against each other.
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All PBS in the company will be going metro. So for some 1 person will cover 2 store or 3. With slightly higher pay, but the workload vs pay will make 0 sense.
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2 Buyers positions from every regions will be deleted, this is at the hold of your regional leadership.(could be grocery or specialty) In the end because of further labor cuts on top of this it will truly be worse than just that.
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All labor will be downsized by the end of the month, so many stores and teams will lose their buyer, extra ATL and supervisors, they don't add this number into the 1500, because in one way or another they can be a regular TM with pay cuts, but it still is losing your position.
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Certain regions will be combining teams and eliminated a Team Lead and ATL.
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Regional Offices will be losing any specialist positions like HSH chef type job, etc.
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ASTL will be downsizing for the entire company so if your store has three it better be an insanely busy store or it will be two and then so on if you have two could become one and they all have to apply against each other for these positions.
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All of these positions are offered severance, 8 weeks notice, plus your PTO.
Facts to know of how little they care about you:
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STL's get outrageous QTR bonuses and up, some over 40k at time, none of which were affected or even up for discussion.
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Regional bonuses were not affected at all or even discussed. Coordinators are supposedly not that much, but EC's and up are HUGE!!
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They could have gotten rid of that guy working here for under a year, but they'd rather dump the higher salary long term people.
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Supervisors ATL's and Buyers were pitted against each other to take the focus off of how much "whole foods loves you" and make it a competition.
5.They laugh and say this isn't true when asked, it's 100% TRUE.
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If the company doesn't perform better, there will be more cuts.
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WE SET OUR OWN TARGETS TO WALL STREET. Meaning their dumb asses set them high and misses and the TM's pay for it.
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There have been many cuts over the year, ACCT TL's to just basic in store educators.
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They don't care about the customers or TM growth. If they did why take the hit directly to TM's and store level?
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Why not just when they opened these shit loads of stores since they knew about this for months just not rehire the position that left?????
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By signing that severance you cannot be hired for 6 month except CA, which of course they won't hire you they're either for some excuse they can think of because they will be flagged that you took the severance.
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You also cannot sue or take unemployment if you take severance.
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Doesn't that random Union Awareness Training (AKA Anti-Union Training) a month ago seem sort of obvious to why it was done?
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The higher up didn't lose sleep over this. In fact they are milking the cow, and likely will reap further benefits including giant bonuses and stock options.
And for what was all of this done you may ask???
To lower prices in certain departments. Yep, remember that matching of Trader Joes campaign and those 40 million dollars in ads they found a way to cut labor to spend? That worked for like a month and then failed. TM's now are paying for what the top made mistakes doing.
If it smells like a bag of shit, looks like a bag of shit, it's probably because it is a bag of shit! Our truly dedicated Team Members have been so brainwashed. They blindly are accepting everything without any legal advice or true guidance from Whole Foods. The less you know the more power they have. Just remember when you are a big-boy-company traded on Wall Street and funded by HUGE banks (like Goldman Sachs), you will eventually be a capitalistic monster! Conscious Capitalism my ass- John Mackey. The Unions at least would have protected you not thrown you out with the garbage.