MINNEAPOLIS — Target Corp. is eliminating 3,100 jobs at its headquarters, and most of the 1,700 people being laid off learned of their fate Tuesday.
The company elaborated for the first time on a plan announced last week to eliminate “several thousand” jobs, chiefly at its corporate offices in the Minneapolis area. In addition to the layoffs, 1,400 open jobs will not be filled, Target said.
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“Today is a very difficult day for the Target team, but we believe these are the right decisions for the company,” Target said in a written statement.
Throughout the morning, employees carrying boxes and personal belongings could be seen leaving the company’s main tower.
The company said each laid-off worker will receive at least 15 weeks of pay plus additional severance amounts based on their length of employment. Target said benefits will continue for six months and employees will receive outplacement support and other services.
In a filing with securities regulators, Target said it expects severance costs of about $100 million, resulting in a charge against its first-quarter results.
The job-cutting began at the senior executive level last week, according to Target employees interviewed by the Star Tribune in recent days. One employee who declined to be identified said that about two dozen upper managers were let go Monday and were gone by lunch.
The company, the nation’s fourth-largest retailer with about $72 billion in annual revenue, employed 13,000 at corporate offices in the Twin Cities before the job cuts, which are the largest ever in its headquarters. Including another 14,000 people at stores around Minnesota, Target is the state’s largest employer after the state and federal governments and the Mayo Clinic.
On Monday, Gov. Mark Dayton, whose father and uncles started Target in the 1960s, met with chief executive Brian Cornell at the company’s headquarters. Dayton later told reporters he received an assurance from Cornell that Target was committed to Minneapolis and would keep its headquarters here.
Target has endured slow sales growth over the past few years, but has remained one of the nation’s most profitable retail firms. For several months, its stock has been trading at record highs.
Executives mishandled an expansion in Canada that resulted in several billion dollars in losses in the past two years. And in late 2013, a data breach put the private information of millions of customers at risk and also damaged Target’s reputation.
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