Sears Holdings Corp. to lay off 145 employees at Naperville call center

Sears Holdings Corp. plans to lay off 145 employees at its call center in Naperville, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification report for January.

Sears filed the announcement of the call center’s closing on Jan. 27, three days before the company made very public its decision to lay off 300 corporate employees, or 4.3 percent of its 6,900-member workforce, in response to a sharp decline in consumer spending. Those cuts were made at the company’s Hoffman Estates, headquarters, as well as its offices in Troy, Mich., and New York City.

Sears did not respond to calls for a comment Tuesday.

“I think 2009 is going to be another difficult year for retail in general, particularly for discretionary retailers like Sears selling big-ticket items,” said Kim Picciola, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. “They’re looking at their business, looking at ways to reduce cost structure and manage their inventory as they navigate this difficult consumer environment.”

January’s WARN report, released Tuesday, showed planned layoffs of more than 3,700 workers, half the more than 7,400 layoffs reported in December. Under Illinois’ WARN Act, employers must provide 60 days’ notice of pending plant closures or mass layoffs, defined as impacting at least 25 employees or 33 percent of workers at a single site.

Among the 26 other companies filing with WARN in January were the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago-based Bretford Manufacturing Inc. and major retailers like The Home Depot Inc. and Target Corp., which cited relocations, downsizing and reductions in orders as some of the reasons for company layoffs.

According to the report, Sears will begin to lay off employees at the Naperville call center on Mar. 28.

For these employees and the thousands of others being pushed out of the work force, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity offers some support for the recently laid-off.

“When a WARN notice comes into our department, it serves as an alert for us to have a rapid response team available to serve the employees that are affected by these events,” said Ashley Cross, spokeswoman for the state agency.

“First, we send workforce development officials, department representatives and people from the Illinois Department of Employment Security to meet with the company that is making the layoffs, and then conduct pre-layoff workshops with impacted workers,” she said.

According to Cross, these voluntary workshops provide WARN-reported employees with access to a wide range of state services, including unemployment insurance, resume reviews, child care and career counseling.

Separately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday that the total labor turnover rate reached 3.7 percent in December, a 0.4 percentage-point jump from November. The BLS attributed the steep increase in turnover to the widespread layoffs and discharges which companies like Sears have been implementing.

The BLS said the retail industry saw the biggest decrease in job openings, down 21 percent to 305,000 in December, from 386,000 in November.