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Huffington Post Canada reports that Coach has been quietly laying off all of its part-time employees at the company's 36 Canadian locations. Employees were given the required six-week notice but were offered no severance packages to ease the transition.
One of the laid-off employees told the Huffington Post that she was notified of her termination last week, along with other Coach employees who worked under 30 hours per week in stores that make more than $1 million in annual sales. Coach explained that it was moving towards just employing full-time sales associates in order to build deeper connections with Coach's customers. The retailer's recent report of terrible sales in North America may also be affecting the layoffs.
"I think that’s a load of crap, because I was the third-highest seller in the store and my client track book was the second largest," one former part-time employee told the Huffington Post. Coach's global head of communications told the Huffington Post that the layoffs would make way for more employees to have full-time opportunities, but the large majority of the workers that the Huffington Post interviewed were not given the option to move to full time.
We've reached out to Coach to see if the company is planning to do the same with its US stores, and will update accordingly.