Planned layoffs and furloughs top 74,000 in April

The number of layoffs Bay Area employers revealed during April topped 74,000, including coronavirus-linked furloughs at the San Jose offices of tech company Nutanix.

The 74,200 job cuts that Bay Area employers revealed in official notices to the state’s Employment Development Department in April were five times as great as the reductions employers in the nine-county region disclosed during

March, according to this news organization’s analysis of the EDD filings.

During March, employers in the Bay Area proposed job cuts totaling 13,900, WARN notices of layoffs filed with the EDD show.

The largest round of staffing changes disclosed in recent days is by Nutanix, a tech company that provides cloud-based data and apps services. The company has informed the EDD that it is planning furloughs affecting 1,457 jobs in the Bay Area. Of those, 1,434 are in San Jose, 12 in San Mateo and 11 are in San

Francisco, the firms WARN notice said.

“Due to the COVID-19 emergency and related government order and/or instructions and/or business circumstances, Nutanix is implementing two separate, one-week unpaid furloughs,” Nutanix stated in an April 21 letter to the state EDD. The reductions will not be permanent, the company said.

Other major job reductions announced in recent days, most of which are temporary, according to the EDD notices:

• Hotel Nikko San Francisco

cut 340 positions in San Francisco. The EDD site describes this as a temporary layoff.

• Sysco, a distributor of food products, kitchen equipment, utensils, and tabletop items, laid off 183 workers in Fremont. The layoffs are described as temporary.

• Daley’s Drywall cut 169 jobs in Campbell. The layoffs were listed as temporary.

• Goodwill Industries reduced staffing by 139 in Concord. The action was described as a temporary layoff on the EDD site.

• Bon Appetit Management cut 120 Santa Clara jobs. The layoffs were listed as temporary.

• North Block Hotel and Redd Wood Restaurant cut 108 positions in Yountville. The action is described as a temporary closure.

San Jose-based Nutanix told the EDD it would conduct two waves of furloughs on a “rolling basis.” Once complete, each employee will have endured a total of two weeks of unpaid leave.

In the first wave of staffing reductions, workers are scheduled to undergo unpaid furloughs of one week at some point during the period of May 4 through July 26, Nutanix said. The second wave would again consist of employees taking a one-week unpaid furlough on a rolling basis at some point during the period of Aug. 3 through Oct. 31.

“This action is expected to be temporary, conditioned upon the status of the COVID-19 emergency, any applicable government orders and instructions, and business circumstances at that time,” Nutanix stated in the notice to the EDD.