WeWork may lay off thousands
- by Emilio Sims
- in Money
- — Nov 19, 2019
Through this step, the company is looking to gain financial stability as it continues to pull out all the stops to reverse company fortunes. The paper cites "two people with knowledge of the matter" who say the company will lay off up to 4,500 employees this week. An additional 1,000 employees will leave as WeWork sells or closes down noncore businesses, like a private school in Manhattan that WeWork set up.
In addition, some 1,000 building maintenance employees will be transferred to an outside contractor in an outsourcing move widely criticized by employees.
During the recent tumult at the company, employees formed a group, the WeWorkers Coalition, that, among other things, is pressing for severance packages for departing employees that it considers equitable.
WeWork now has around 12,500 employees worldwide, which means the layoffs will amount to the company cutting anywhere from a third to nearly half of its workforce.
The specter of mass layoffs looms less than a week after reports that WeWork lost $1.25 billion in the quarter that ended in September as the company opened almost 100 new locations across the world. Most of these new locations are in a loss and might be depleting the company's cash reserves, which stood at $2 billion by September end.
Before the acquisition, WeWork was planning to cut as many as 2,000 jobs, The Guardian reported in October.
The company dropped the idea of going public in late September after investors showed apprehension by looking at the company's losses, raising questions about the corporate governance of the company.
The work of WeWork is to rent out office spaces to all start-ups, enterprises, and freelancers, which is done by investing real estate in most of the expensive markets around the world.
