For those of you who answered my first question, thank you...Recently, the homedepot announced within the company that they will eliminate the HR dept across the company. One HR rep will service an entire district. Is that right?

This may not be as bad as it sounds... In a lot of retail store chains HR does not do hiring, firing, or evaluations at the store level where most of the people are employed. The store management staff does. The HR dept role is support for the store and district mangers. So yes they will have a lot of people to help (managers) they most often will not have contact with store employees unless the employee seeks them out. If you walk into a retail store and ask when the last time the had someone from HR come by the store you will find that it can be a couple of years.

Remember that in a chain store you have a lot of support people with differnt titles than you may be used to. The store has a regional & district manager sometimes 2 one for Opps, the other is Sales, they also have a regional & district HR rep, Payroll Rep, Security for both employees and customers. They have contacts or rep in distribution/warehouse, coporate auditors, just to name a few. Yes they have cut out a lot of people both in the coporate offices, regional & district levels but with automation or restructuring were or are they needed. The store personal still have a good support structure.

Is it right, in an enviroment where you have to make a profit or go out of business do you still employ people you do not need? Or do you offer them another position in the company. No most main office people will not go work in a store but they usually are offered something else. Most people think they are entitled to a job not thinking of how a coporation really works. Home Depot is not the government where they can just raise taxes and hire or keep people they do not really need. Do not try to say well the CEO makes $$$ Yes it may be more than it should be.

I look at the governemt knowing that I have friends in the government that spend money at the end of their year just to spend it. Why?,if their agency does not spend it this year they may have their budget cut for next year. EVEN THOUGH they have had to buy new things for the office for the last 5 years totaling well over $127,000 for a 30 person group that they did not reall need. Oh yea that is not including hiring 2 people over the past 2 years just to use the budget as well. The work load has not increased just the number of people doing it has. So there is another $63,000 a year that the gov't will waist and that is just one little office.

Back to your question is it right... yes it is unless you force Lowes out of business so Home Depot can raise prices to keep the people employeed and that only works if people keep spending money remember the economy is slowing down slightly so most people will not spend money at retailers as freely. I worked in the retail industry for 14 years and it was like that in the 80's & 90's and will be like that forever.

In the world of business, there is no such thing as "fair". The only question they want answered is "What will increase our profits." Sometimes, that means firing all the higher paid, more experienced employees, and hiring a few low pay, part-timers instead. The customer is the big loser in the long run.

I read that home depot eliminated 500 jobs in the home office. Most companies seem to be cutting back. When I worked for a National Company during the last recession, they did the same thing. There was one employment specialist for the entire Southern California region, and she had to travel all over the 250 mile area for new member orientations.

Because of her schedule, many of us oldtime workers had to do the work of two people until she could get to our office to train the new employee. They also instituted a monthly orientation for all new employees in our area, which meant some offices had to wait weeks for new people to come on.

Strange, I haven't heard anything about it. In-store HR is gone but there is regional, district, and even an HR in each store twice a week.

I haven't heard anything about doing away with HR. That would be a catastrophe if really done since the company relies on so much being done by the HR department.

The in-store position is gone but not the area of the company. I haven't heard of anyone being laid off since early February this year and the only people gone were in HR because of the reducing of positions.

This is only what I've heard and seen.