Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette will be laying off roughly 2,600 employees due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Pursuant to the governor’s order, we had to shut down a week ago Monday,” Goodwill’s General Counsel and Human Resources Director Bob Barsocchini said. “We had no work for all the people who were staffing the stores.”
Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette operates 53 stores and 39 attended donation sites, Barsocchini said.
He said a total of 2,632 employees would be laid off.
Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette on SE 6th Avenue in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday, March 31, 2020.
Bryan M. Vance / OPB
Some employees will keep their jobs, such as people in human resources, finance and operations as well as store managers who are working to connect with their employees and assist in site cleanups and continuing donation drop-offs.
Barsocchini said the layoffs will be effective April 2, which will allow Goodwill to pay its employees’ health insurance premiums through the month.
“Had we made the layoff effective by the end of March, they wouldn’t have that,” he said.
At the end of April, laid off employees will receive information for continuing health insurance coverage through COBRA.
The company will also be paying out any accrued vacation employees may have, Barsocchini said, and affected employees will receive an additional subsidy of $300.
Amid the closures of its stores, Barsocchini said Goodwill has also stopped all of its programs such as its job connection program and free classes for the public.
“All of those [programs] we fund through sales of donated goods,” he said.
The layoffs will undoubtedly add stress to Oregon's unemployment department, which had received more than 76,000 unemployment claims during the week of March 15. A week prior, Oregonians had filed fewer than 5,000 claims.
Barsocchini said Goodwill will be working to hire back every employee that was laid off after the pandemic ends, though that may be harder depending on the length of its effects.
“The longer this goes, the more difficult it will be to just open up 53 stores at once,” he said. “We really, truly are focused on getting this back to normal as soon as we can. I can’t overstate how really dedicated the staff is right now at doing that,”