RETAIL : Sears’ Buena Park Employees Received Bad News Via Video, Store Meetings

What’s the best way for a company in the Midwest to tell its West Coast employees that their employer is undertaking massive store closings and layoffs?

Sears, Roebuck & Co., based in Chicago, faced that situation Monday when it announced the restructuring, which will result in 113 store closings, 50,000 layoffs and the death of Sears’ 104-year-old catalogue.

Sears’ board of directors approved the restructuring during a Saturday meeting. Officials of the nation’s third-largest retailer spent the rest of the weekend scrambling to notify store officials about a 7 a.m. Monday video conference by Arthur Martinez, who heads Sears’ merchandise group.

Lorenzo Dimichieli, general manager of Sears’ Buena Park store, learned about the video conference during a Sunday night telephone call. He was at the office early Monday ready for “a major announcement.”

After the video conference, Dimichieli organized a storewide meeting before opening the doors for business. “It was a well-orchestrated way to do it,” he said.

Not surprisingly, some local employees heard the news first on the radio or from neighbors.

Several hours after the restructuring was made public, an employee at one of Sears’ catalogue stores complained that “officially, I don’t know anything yet. . . . My boss has been on the phone all day trying to get information.”