Bay Area job cuts slow, but remain high
Tech Museum, Varian Medical and Crowne Plaza among latest to reduce their staffs
The pace of planned job cuts in the Bay Area remains well below the region’s coronaviruslinked peaks of April, but is still greatly elevated from the normal pace of layoffs from early in 2020, an analysis of official notices posted by the state’s labor department shows.
The Tech museum in downtown San Jose, Varian Medical Systems in Palo Alto, Parc 55 hotel in San Francisco, Crowne Plaza Concord/Walnut Creek hotel, and Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa in the Wine Country are among the staffing reductions detailed in WARN notices posted in July by the state Employment Development Department.
Ominously, at least a few employers that had previously instituted temporary furloughs or layoffs have now begun permanent layoffs, according to this news organization’s analysis of WARN notices posted this month and in prior months during 2020.
Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa in Napa notified the EDD of permanent layoffs totaling about 100 workers effective on June 30, according to an EDD post last week. In March, the Napa hotel alerted the EDD of a temporary layoff of 150 workers.
Rosewood CordeValle in San Martin notified EDD of 80 permanent job cuts at the hotel, resort, spa, and golf course.
Those workers are scheduled to lose their jobs by Aug. 24. In March, Rosewood CordeValle filed a WARN notice detailing temporary layoffs or furloughs of 265 workers.
Many hotels have reopened in the Bay Area and elsewhere as state and local government agencies ease restrictions and business shutdowns. However, in multiple instances, hotel websites have posted warnings of restrictions on operations.
Some economists believe shifting business conditions and social distancing requirements could mean employers in some instances may find they can’t rehire all the workers they had previously furloughed.
Among the noteworthy layoffs posted by the EDD so far in July:
Varian Medical Systems
disclosed plans to permanently lay off about 100 workers at its Palo Alto headquarters. “The first, and majority, of the layoffs will occur on September 1, 2020, with a few additional layoffs scheduled intermittently after that date through the end of 2020,” Leslie Yuan, assistant general counsel with Varian Medical, stated in a letter to the EDD.
• Parc 55 San Francisco Hilton told the EDD that it had decided to temporarily lay off 330 workers in San
Francisco.
• Crowne Plaza Concord/Walnut Creek said it had temporarily laid off 115 workers in Concord at the end of June.
• The Tech Interactive said it had decided to temporarily lay off about 65 workers at its downtown San Jose complex on South Market Street. The Tech said the coronavirus and uncertainty about when it might be able to re-open the operation prompted the job cuts.
So far in July, the nearly
5,600 announced Bay Area layoffs represent a pace that is no worse than what occurred in June, and far below the 74,000 officially disclosed layoffs in April.
Yet totals for only the first part of July already exceed announced layoffs of 3,000 in all of January and 2,400 in February.
The WARN notices filed by employers do not provide a complete picture of the Bay Area’s job market. The filings give no information about hiring by
companies and don’t detail all the job cuts in the region. The notices primarily serve to indicate the pace of job cuts in the area and sketch out details of local staffing reductions.
On Friday, the EDD is scheduled to release its official employment report for June, which will provide a more detailed snapshot of the respective job markets in the Bay Area and California.