Lowe's to remove and relocate hundreds of jobs in the Charlotte area

Lowe's is making major changes to its workforce in the Charlotte area, including cutting hundreds of jobs and relocating hundreds of others.

On Thursday morning, about 600 full-time employees at Lowe's Wilkesboro headquarters were told that their jobs would be transferred to the retailer's Mooresville headquarters, about an hour away. According to Dan Frahm, Lowe's Vice President of Communications, approximately 80 other Wilkesboro-based technical positions will be transferred to the Lowe Data Center in Winston-Salem.

Twelve other jobs based in Wilkesboro are being cut and their work will be absorbed by the posts in Mooresville, Frahm said.

Regardless of the offshoring of the company, Lowe's laid off 207 full-time workers at a Charlotte facility, called the trans-shipment terminal, while the company transfers the work to a third-party vendor in May. Located on David Cox Road in North Charlotte, the Cross-Dock Terminal is a warehouse where workers stage home appliances and other large, bulky items such as patio furniture.

The terminal will remain open and continue to serve as a hub for the delivery of bulky and bulky items, such as appliances, to Lowe stores in the Charlotte area, Frahm said. Similarly, Lowe's has switched to third-party vendors at its cross-dock terminals in Houston and Charleston. Frahm said the company will try to find another job for Charlotte employees who are losing their jobs.

Lowe's said that using cross-dock terminals to store and display large objects frees space in stores.

"Today, bulky and bulky products such as household appliances are stored in our stores. However, most customers do not take the product with them after buying it, "said Don Frieson, Lowe's executive vice president of supply chain, at the company's analysts and investors conference. in December.

The jobs that move from Wilkesboro to Charlotte are in several departments, including supply chain, finance and human resources.

Lowe's is encouraging Wilkesboro workers to relocate and provide resettlement assistance to some employees, Frahm said. The goal is to start moving in June and the off-site team is working from Mooresville by the end of the year, he added.

Lowe's will provide severance pay to Wilkesboro workers who choose not to relocate, Frahm said.

The relocation of hundreds of jobs does not mean that Lowe's is shutting down in Wilkesboro, where Lowe's first store opened in the 1920s. Lowe's head office was also in Wilkesboro until the company moved to a new campus in Mooresville in 2003.

Lowe's will maintain its contact center and central production office in Wilkesboro, where the company will employ approximately 1,300 people by the time it relocates workers, said Frahm. The Mooresville office will employ approximately 4,400 people after the move.

The relocation of hundreds of Wilkesboro jobs to other Lowe offices aims to enhance "the collaboration and efficiency of our internal functions by allowing these teams to work side by side," said Frahm.

With 1.3 million square feet, the Mooresville campus has the capacity to accommodate 600 additional jobs, Frahm added, although "it may be harder to find parking."

An eventful year for Lowe's

Job cuts and offshoring come on the heels of Lowe's transformation under the leadership of Marvin Ellison, who took office as CEO in July.

Ellison has worked to improve the financial health of the company by focusing on what he calls "the basics of retailing". Under Ellison, the company hired several retail veterans into its management team, closed dozens of stores, and ended business units that did not work. started a redesign of the stores.

Lowe's has also made other staff changes in recent months.

For example, as part of a transformation of the management of its stores nationwide, the company announced a major restructuring in January of adding and removing jobs, including the role of specialist from inside the project.

And in December, Lowe's announced that it would hire approximately 2,000 software engineers over the next few years as the company strives to modernize its digital capabilities.