Edgars and Jet retrench 22 000 workers.
South Africa’s biggest clothing retailer Edcon which owns Edgars and Jet among others retrenches 22 000 of its employees.
Edcon Holdings has served 22,000 of its employees with notices of retrenchments as it blames load-shedding and the initial 45-day hard lockdown for its collapse. The business is seeking new buyers as it struggles to break even due to debt and poor sales.
On Thursday, Edcon’s 22,000 workers were served with retrenchment notices by the company’s business rescue practitioners (BRPs), as the 90-year old company tries to avoid being liquidated.
An employee who has been working for Edgars for more than 10 years blamed their struggles on the company shifting focus onto its financial services which brought in “easy millions of rands”.
“Edcon’s core business is selling clothes but we found ourselves with shortages of stock in many of our stores, especially smaller ones because we lost focus and this was bound to affect our sales in general,” said the employee who asked not to be named.
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Another employee said she had already updated her CV and was sending it out looking for another job. “I’m very scared, I’m in fear because I don’t really understand what’s really happening but it’s clear that our jobs are on the line.”