Sears: Now Come the (Penalty-Free) Headquarters Layoffs «

As I foreshadowed on January 5, despite a huge subsidy package enacted by the state of Illinois in December, Sears Holdings Corp. has already announced layoffs at its headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates. Last week, the retailer announced that 100 HQ staff will be laid off.

This after the chain announced on December 27—just 11 days after the subsidies were signed into law—that it will close as many as 120 stores nationwide.

That December deal, valued at up to $275 million, came after Sears threatened to relocate in headquarters to another state. Its predecessor company, Sears, Roebuck & Co., played the same “job blackmail” game in 1989. The $168 million, 23-year deal it won then was soon to expire when Sears Holdings announced it might again be footloose.

Everything about these two episodes demonstrates what is wrong with economic development in America today. The 1989 subsidy package paid Sears to abandon its famous Tower in Chicago’s transit-rich Loop and relocate 29 miles northwest to an area which then did not even have a transit bus line—one of the most egregious cases of state-sponsored sprawl in U.S. history.

Source: clawback.org

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