Sears Cuts 200 HQ Jobs

Hoffman Estates, Ill. Sears Holdings Corp., which owns the Kmart and Sears retail chains, has announced it is cutting about 200 headquarters jobs as chairman Edward Lampert tries to bring its overhead costs in line with falling sales.

The 200 jobs, which are in support functions, represent about 4% of Sears' 5,000 headquarters employees, said Sears spokesman Chris Brathwaite. He declined to be more specific.

The retailer notified employees of the pending cuts in a memo Tuesday from interim CEO W. Bruce Johnson.

The job cuts come as Lampert looks for a way to turn around the company created when he engineered Kmart Holding Corp.’s purchase of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 2005. Late last month, Sears unveiled a restructuring that divides the company into a five independently run businesses. 

Support is one of the five business areas being created under the new structure. While Brathwaite declined to disclose the support functions targeted in the cuts, Sears described the new support unit as housing such functions as marketing, store operations, customer strategy and finance.