Borders Group laid off 12 employees at its corporate offices earlier this month, including at least two buyers, Linn Hopkins and Rick Adler, according to a source within the company who added that Borders attributed the move to "rightsizing."
Anne Roman, a Borders spokesperson, said the job eliminations "were part of an ongoing assessment of a variety of business factors that includes a look at our people resources and whether or not they are best deployed to help our company meet its business goals." Roman said that the laid-off employees were offered outplacement services and that some of the 12 may fill different positions at Borders.
Meanwhile, employees at Borders's flagship store on E. Liberty Street in Ann Arbor, Mich., went on strike November 8. The employees are members of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local No. 876, which has represented about half the store's 60 employees since last December. On October 6, the union rejected the last contract offer proposed by management.
Heidi Sherman, a full-time Borders employee for two years, told the Michigan Daily that Borders hasn't "even been negotiating.... This is something that they have done in previous negotiations and it makes everyone feel really ineffective and like they are getting nowhere, and then unions give up and they go away. We're sick of this happening here and we feel that the only way we can win and the only way we can get a contract is to go on strike because it's never been done before at a Borders."
Wages are a major union issue. The current starting hourly wage at Borders in Ann Arbor is $6.50, with the average store employee making approximately $8.20, according to the union.
Roman commented, "We believe all of our employees at all of our 430 Borders stores deserve to be treated fairly and consistently." She acknowledged one of the issues is pay, but said, "We know from monitoring national retail data that we're highly competitive in wages and benefits in our sector of retail." She called the demands of the union excessive. "They're demanding more than the competitive environment will permit, more than employees at other Borders stores get and more than what is offered at other retailers of our type nationwide."
Borders is keeping the E. Liberty Street outlet open using non-unionized workers from the store, employees from nearby Borders stores and employees from the corporate office.
