As CVS employees await word on whether their jobs will be among the nearly 3,000 the Rhode Island-based company plans to eliminate, Woonsocket Mayor Christopher Beauchamp said the city should be able to weather the layoffs, although concerns remain for the future.
CVS Health, which is headquartered in Woonsocket, said Monday that it plans to lay off 2,900 employees. The layoffs will come “primarily” from the ranks of corporate employees, according to spokesperson Mike DeAngelis. And while the job cuts will affect just roughly 1% of the company’s overall workforce, CVS has not said how many Rhode Island-based employees will be affected.
CVS plans to file a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice with the state, according to DeAngelis. The notice is required by federal law in certain situations if the company plans to lay off more than 50 employees.
Mayor Beauchamp said he expects “about a thousand” people based in Woonsocket to get layoff notices.
Beauchamp said he is also worried about the eventual possibility of CVS moving its headquarters or eliminating a substantial portion of its footprint in the city. But when he asked a CVS contact if they were planning to move headquarters, the mayor was told, “‘Absolutely not. Our headquarters is in Woonsocket. It’s staying there as long as the foreseeable future,’” Beauchamp said.
The kinds of management jobs that CVS says it plans to eliminate in this round of job cuts can have outsized impact, according to Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island. He said higher salaries have higher buying power, which can ripple through the economy. But the possible hundreds of layoffs CVS may be planning in Rhode Island are unlikely to devastate the state or local economies.
This story was reported by The Public's Radio. You can read the entire story here.
