The Grind:
Instacart is laying off approximately 1,800 employees as it transitions to a “Partner Pick” model for grocery services. The company made the acknowledgement in a Medium blog post on Tuesday, noting, “we’ll be winding down our in-store operations at select retailer locations over the coming months.” The line was included about two-thirds of the way down in a larger post about the new Instacart Pickup Retailer models.
The Details:
The layoffs, reported by Bloomberg to be about 1,900 and by CNN Business to be approximately 1,800, include the only 10 unionized employees in the company’s operation. Instacart has more than 500,000 workers, adding nearly 250,000 following the onset of COVID-19 as demand for its services increased 500%. In a letter obtained by Tech Crunch, Joseph E. Santucci Jr., partner at law firm Stinson, informed the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents 10 in-store shoppers (ISSs) at Mariano’s in Skokie, Illinois, that their jobs were being eliminated. The letter states that over 366 ISSs at Kroger-owned stores, including Mariano’s, and “over fifteen hundred ISSs working at other grocery chains” will see their employment end “as a result of our new Partner Pick model.” Read more…