SUPERVALU is a name that, if you don’t have any in your local area, you may not be that familiar with. So before we talk about the job cuts to come lets begin by getting you up to speed on the company and what exactly it is that they do to make their money, “SUPERVALU® is a leader in the grocery retailing industry. We are a grocery and pharmacy company serving a wide range of customers in neighborhoods nationwide, through
stores ranging from hard discount to traditional and premium groceryformats. SUPERVALU reaches millions of families with the products and services they need through owned, licensed, franchised and affiliated stores.”

Sadly the company is getting ready to cut back on about 700 jobs in the New England area, in a bid to make the company more lean and spend less on employee related expenses. The job cuts, which are set to impact multiple states, are likely to trigger one or more mass layoff action along the way. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” The only good news in a mass layoff action is that the workers must be given several weeks of notice before their jobs are cut, and they are taking off of the payroll and put onto the unemployment rolls.

The company recently put out its third quarter numbers, which show why the company is looking to trim as much of the fat from their budgets as they can in order to enhnace their profitability, “SUPERVALU INC. (NYSE: SVU) today reported second quarter fiscal 2013 net sales of $8.0 billion compared to $8.4 billion last year. The net loss for the second quarter totaled $111 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, including predominantly non-cash net charges of $111 million after-tax, or $0.52 per diluted share. These net charges are comprised of intangible asset impairment charges ($45 million after-tax, or $0.21 per diluted share), charges related to the previously announced store closures net of a gain on sale of assets ($25 million after-tax, or $0.12 per diluted share), other asset impairment charges ($23 million after-tax, or $0.11 per diluted share), the write-off of unamortized costs related to the senior secured credit facilities which were replaced by the recent debt refinancing ($14 million after-tax, or $0.06 per diluted share), and other employee-related costs ($4 million after-tax, or $0.02 per diluted share). When adjusted for these items, second quarter net earnings were $0.00 per diluted share compared to $60 million, or $0.28 per diluted share last year. [See table 1 for a reconciliation of GAAP (actual) and non-GAAP (adjusted) results appearing in this release]. Year-to-date net cashflows from operating activities were $415 million and EBITDA before charges for the 52 weeks ended September 8, 2012 was $1.65 billion.”

This is, as you may have guessed, not the first time that the company has chosen to turn to layoffs in order to set its budget to right. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed on the cuts made by the company this summer in no time at all, “They are getting ready to get rid of about 2,500 positions in what is known as the Albertsons unit. That unit covers stores in the states of Nevada
as well as California. There are roughly 147 stores in that unit and it looks like the cuts are expected to come from all of these locations. The cuts represent a loss of about 13 percent of the overall workforce for this unit of the company, making it a fairly significant loss of jobs. As a matter of fact these cuts are more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action.”