Supervalu Inc. has cut the company 401K match and frozen salaries for thousands of its employees, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports.
“As we have stated in our last two earnings calls, we need to immediately take costs out of the business in order to fund our growth plans,” said Michael Siemienas, a spokesman for Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company. “As a result Supervalu today (Nov. 16) announced changes to team member compensation and benefits as they are the largest administrative expense.”
These changes will take place in early 2013 and there’s no estimate how long they’ll last.
“Supervalu plans to continue to evaluate them based on the company’s business results,” Siemienas said.
The cuts are for Supervalu’s store support center employees, which include most of Supervalu’s staff at its headquarters in Eden Prairie and at the store offices of its various divisions.
The cuts won’t impact many of the store-level and warehouse-level employees who are covered under union contracts.
The undisclosed sum of money that Supervalu saves from these cuts will be reinvested into the business, Siemienas said.
Earlier this month, Supervalu said it was cutting 700 jobs at its Shaw’s Supermarkets unit, which is located in New England. It was the latest of many job cuts and executive changes that the grocer has made this year.
The company put itself up for sale in July, saying it would consider selling all or part of the company. Supervalu hired a new CEO, Wayne Sales, who then made several other management changes in August. In September the company said it was closing 60 underperforming stores.
