Lidl store in Virginia Beach, California: "Reconnecting with our customers and our stores"
Photo: Steve Helber/ AP
The German discount giant Lidl is cutting around a third of the jobs in the US administration.
According to an internal communication from North America boss
Michael Lagunionek
to employees, which is available to manager magazin, Lidl has put its US business to the test in recent months and identified ways to improve the financial result.
"As a result of this review, we made the very difficult decision to eliminate a number of functions throughout the company," writes Lagunionek, justifying the "not an easy decision" with the fact that the number of jobs in administration has recently increased significantly more , than the number of branches.
"It went too fast. Now we have to reconnect with our customers and our branches," the letter continues.
"To achieve this, we must simplify our organizational structure, processes and standard operating procedures. It is imperative that we get back to basics immediately."
Every third job in US administration affected
Lagunionek did not say how many places are affected.
Instead, he announced that the relevant employees would be informed by email within the next two hours.
According to information from manager magazin, there will be around 200 to 250 jobs, which would correspond to around a third of the jobs in the US administration.
In 2017, years after arch-competitor Aldi, Lidl gave the go-ahead for its expansion into the USA, but there have been repeated setbacks to this day.
The managers were replaced in rows.
In 2020, withdrawal was even up for discussion.
Recently, however, Lidl had opened new locations again.
The group currently operates around 175 branches in the USA.
The new Lidl boss Kenneth McGrath knows the market well from his time as CEO of the US discounter Save-A-Lot and is said to be the driving force behind the restructuring.