Labor & Employment

Walmart is moving its greeters back to the front of the store three years after the retailer moved them to the back.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the retailer is experimenting with moving the greeters back to the front of the store in part to deter theft. Walmart is testing the approach in several hundred of its 4,500 or so U.S. stores, the newspaper says.

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New York -- Target Corp. has laid off about 140 employees from its Minneapolis headquarters as part of its transformation efforts, and eliminated 50 open positions, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Including the latest round of cuts, Target has let go about 2,500 workers this year.

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A former Walmart executive has joined with a real estate executive to expand New York City-based luxury home décor retailer Gracious Home.

Camp Hill, Pa. -- Rite Aid's first-quarter earnings plunged 55%, mainly on costs tied to a $2 billion acquisition. The chain also lowered its full-year profit outlook.

The drugstore chain in February announced that it would buy pharmacy benefits manager EnvisionRx.  Rite Aid said it expects the deal, expected to close by the beginning of July, to increase its annual revenue by as much as 18.6%.

The retailer earned $18.8 million in the quarter that ended May 30, down from $41.4 million in the year ago period.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that Target laid off 140 staffers and eliminated 50 open positions at its headquarters on Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, the eliminated positions were in places “we identified redundancies or opportunities for greater efficiencies,” Molly Snyder, a Target spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail. 

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Brooklyn, N.Y. - Home furnishings retailer West Elm has named Johanna Uurasjarvi as senior VP of design, responsible for guiding the overall creative direction of the West Elm brand across its retail, catalog and online channels. She will lead the product design team and report to West Elm president Jim Brett.

Texting and checking social media sites aren’t on any retailer’s job description for store level hourly positions, but those and other Internet-enabled activities are sapping the productivity of workers, according to a CareerBuilder study.

The study of 2,175 hiring and human resources managers didn’t look just at the retail industry, but who hasn’t been in a store and seen a smartphone obsessed employed distracted by their device to the detriment of customer service.

A disruption in product flow because of the West Coast port dispute led to a drop in same store sales for Hancock Fabrics in the first quarter.

The company had net sales of $61.7 million for the first quarter ended May 2, compared to $63 million in the first quarter of the prior year. Same store sales declined by 1.9%.