BELLINGHAM, WA - Haggen, the Bellingham-based retail chain that acquired 146 of the Albertson’s and Safeway locations during its large merger, is cutting back hundreds of employee hours in Washington locations.
According to the Seattle Times, the company reduced employee hours by more than 500, about a fifth of the usual work time. One employee told the publication that the store is logging about 1,700 hours per week, nearly 400 less than what they recalled for the slower-traffic weeks when the locations were under Safeway and Albertson’s.
As we previously reported, Haggen recently announced that stores in its Southern California and Arizona locations will see a number of job reductions and cutbacks as it continues to adjust to its newly doubled store count. In the acquisition, the company purchased 26 Washington locations, expanding itself in the market.
“Waves we created as we converted stores in new markets are still settling, and we expect there to be some ebb and flow in our workforce,” Haggen said in a statement, according to the Seattle Times, when asked about the cutbacks in the Pacific Northwest region. According to the report, the chain did not address the exact numbers described by the Seattle Time’s source, only saying that weekly work hours were “adjusted to accommodate the natural seasonal summer slowdown, and could be increased as sales return in the upcoming back-to-school and holiday seasons.”
Tom Geiger, Spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 21, said in the report that a couple of locations cut “hundreds and hundreds of hours” since June. While he speculated this is due to lack of customer traffic, reasons have not been confirmed officially.
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