Labor & Employment

Elle Chute, co-chairman of Chute Gerdeman and widely respected creative force in the retail design industry, has announced her retirement from the firm she founded with her husband Denny Gerdeman 26 years ago.

Gerdeman will continue as chairman and, with CEO Brian Shafley, will lead Chute Gerdeman’s growth with its focus on d excellence in retail and hospitality design innovation.

Food Lion has rolled out its “Easy Fresh and Affordable” branding campaign to its 162 stores in the Raleigh, North Carolina market. The $250 million initiative included full store remodels, price investments and training of associates.

Staples is limiting the severance pay of top executives as the resolution of a deal with Office Depot draws near.

Staples announced that its board of directors has adopted a new policy stipulating that the company will not pay any severance benefits that exceed three times the sum of an executive’s base salary plus target annual cash incentive award, without seeking shareholder approval.

In addition, CEO Ron Sargent has elected to amend his severance agreement to align with the terms of the new policy.

Bon-Ton is planning to hire thousands of seasonal workers this holiday season for its 270 Bon-Ton, Bergner's, Boston Store, Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers department stores.

The company says it will hire 13,000 seasonal workers, about as many as last year, and will also hire 500 seasonal employees at its e-commerce fulfillment center and at its distribution centers.

Dollar General is rightsizing its expense structure by eliminating several hundred positions at its home office.

Could American Apparel founder and ousted CEO Dov Charney thwart the chain’s Chapter 11 filing? "Any CEO who has built a company from scratch -- which has become a sizable globally known enterprise that is nearly synonymous with the CEO himself and his personality -- is going to be able to cause some sort of disruption in the bankruptcy court," said Matt Covington, a managing director at Conway MacKenzie, a financial consulting firm that specializes in bankruptcy transactions, in a report by the Los Angeles Times.

Dollar General is rightsizing its expense structure by eliminating several hundred positions at its home office.

Dollar General said that effective immediately it had eliminated 255 positions but noted that 115 of those positions were vacant. The move follows an announcement the previous week by Walmart to eliminate 450 positions at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters. Dollar General said the move was part of a broader initiative aimed at proactively improving efficiencies and reducing expenses by restructuring its corporate support functions.

Curt Garner, who first announced he would leave his current role as CIO of Starbucks Corp. in June, has revealed his next professional stop.

Garner will join Chipotle Mexican Grill as CIO effective Nov. 23, and become the company’s first executive with that title. Chipotle appears to want to duplicate some of the IT-related success Starbucks has had in areas such as store operations and customer experience.