QVC is or was Chester County grown. They proved along with HSN that you could push a lot of product onto the American public via television. I have known people who worked for QVC and people who have made money off of QVC.
They aren’t my kind of retail conglomerate so I have not ever been a true QVC shopper. I have hit the outlet store on Lancaster Pike in Malvern/Frazer in the Lincoln Court Shopping Center maybe three or four times. And every time I have I have regretted it because the stuff falls apart. I have, however, seen tour buses pull up to this outlet store. QVC is like a religion, much like HSN. I don’t get it.
Today the news hit the media that QVC is sending 220 jobs or better to Poland.
How ironic that I have three Polish friends with graduate school level education who left everything behind to seek the American dream and an American conglomerate is now taking the American dream away from a couple hundred employees and sending the jobs to Poland.
QVC Laying Off 220, Shipping Jobs to Poland
Some had been with the company since the 1980s, a source said.
QVC is laying off 220 people as it ships parts of its HR, IT, finance and legal departments to Krakow, Poland. Approximately 100 people at the company’s West Chester, Pa. campus are expected to lose their jobs. There are also 40 layoffs in the U.K., 70 in Germany and 10 in Italy.
QVC CFO Ted Jastrzebski broke the news to Pennsylvania workers on Wednesday, leading some long-time employees to get emotional, according to a source familiar with the situation. Some of the terminated employees had been with the company since its very first years in the late 1980s, the source said.
The layoffs are expected to begin no earlier than January 2017 and will be a gradual process.
A QVC representative said in a statement that the company is “always evaluating the structure and scale” of the organization and now plans to establish a “global business services organization” in Poland.
Horse twaddle. That is corporate speak for “it’s cheaper over there.”
People who have been employees for not just years but decades being given the boot.
QVC is a large employer in Chester County and I can’t help but wonder if they will eventually just leave the area altogether? After all they laid off close enough to the same amount of people this past fall, correct?
QVC announces layoffs at county distribution center
By Brian McCullough, Daily Local News 9/9/15
WEST GOSHEN >> Electronic retailer QVC Inc. recently filed notice with the state that it plans to lay off 147 people from its distribution operation in Chester County.
Company spokeswoman Diane Zappas said employees in the affected operation were informed of the layoff plans in March. The reductions, which are ongoing now, are scheduled to be completed by Nov. 9, according to the filing on the state’s Department of Labor & Industry website.
Zappas said the affected employees work in a “very small” distribution center that is no longer efficient to operate.
Where will West Goshen Township and Chester County be if QVC continues to ship jobs out of our area? Remember 2008?
QVC layoffs begin, most in W. Chester
By Stacey Burling INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: November 13, 2008
Television retailer QVC began a series of layoffs yesterday that would result in the elimination of about 900 jobs – most of them in West Chester – over the next 14 months.
The announcement came after a rough quarter. QVC’s third-quarter revenue, ended Sept. 30, decreased 3 percent to $1.64 billion. …..The cuts at QVC, combined with other reductions, will save the company $30 million to $40 million a year when completed, said Michael George, QVC’s president and chief executive officer. He said the company remained “highly profitable.”
QVC told 160 employees today that their jobs were being eliminated immediately. About 110 were at the company’s corporate headquarters and studio in West Chester and its operations center about two miles away.
QVC will lay off 500 additional people at its distribution center in West Chester over roughly a year, starting after the holidays. Its West Chester call center will close around March 27, leaving 250 additional people out of work. Employees in that building who perform administrative functions will keep their jobs.
In 2008 and in September 2015, the layoffs went to Florence South Carolina, correct?
Now they are going off shore. They are putting loyal long term employees out in the street in a still crappy economy. Why bless their hearts, right?
I think there should be a special place in hell for US companies that ship jobs overseas and to other continents.
One of the first companies I became aware of doing it was American Express. India I believe at the time. It was maddening. Limited grasp of the English language and a script they would not deviate from.
Every time I call Aetna my health insurer I have to make sure I am not in the Philippines call center. Same thing, limited grasp of American English and an unhelpful script they won’t deviate from. If you have McAfee for computer protection, a good portion of them are off shore too. The list goes on. Pick a company a big company and call. Comcast has them too. I remember that is what finally made a family member dump Comcast.
All these companies that are born and bred in the USA which want us to help their profit margins ship jobs away from the United States.
Here is a list from CNN of US companies that outsource –
CNN List of US Companies That Outsource
And how many of these companies that take US jobs off shore and outsource get state and federal monies every year?
This is a great article to read:
The Outsourcing of American Jobs Hurts the Economy on Every Level
Also interesting reading? This new Forbes article:
Feb 19, 2016 @ 09:33 Why Candidates Prefer Bashing Trade To Kissing Babies
And while this is happening ironically the Fashion Institute of Technology will be honoring QVC in the spring. And the QVC spin doctors have also had Canadian Media Placement about how QVC is readying it’s Ontario distribution center.
But for all the success of QVC what does that matter for these additional employees some of whom could be friends and neighbors whom they are kicking to the curb for greener overseas pastures?
There is even a Boycott QVC page on Facebook. Maybe they are onto something?
How can we support a company that is outsourcing their jobs to another country?
Just saying.
I leave you with Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs from his days on QVC:
Nice piece. Good review of the history for those unfamiliar with QVC’s origins and past ChesCo growth and relocation activity.
thank you kind sir!