CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Circuit City on Friday to reconsider its plan to lay off thousands of workers and replace them with lower-paid new hires.
The electronics retailer, facing larger competitors and falling sales, said Wednesday that it would lay off about 3,400 store workers. The laid-off workers, about 8 percent of the company’s total work force, would get a severance package and a chance to reapply for their former jobs, at lower pay, after a 10-week delay, the company said.
“Twelve dollars an hour is now considered too high a wage in America,” Clinton said at a teacher’s union conference. “What’s really stunning is many of these fired workers had been promoted, they’d been told they were doing a good job.”
Circuit City declined to say how much those laid off were paid and how much the new workers would make.
“That is the wrong way to deal with the economic pressures that are facing America,” Clinton said. “When I’m president, we’re going to get back to creating millions of new jobs.”
In a letter to letter to Circuit City chairman and CEO Philip Schoonover, Clinton called the layoffs “inconsistent with the fundamental compact between your company and its employees.”
“Maybe he should get laid off and reapply for his job,” she told the New Hampshire teachers.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
