Lowe's is laying off thousands of workers after hiking quarterly dividends and spending billions to repurchase company shares.
The home improvement chain isn't offering severance to laid-off workers, some of whom have been at Lowe's for a decade or more.
Lowe's last December announced plans to buy back $10 billion worth of stock, according to TrimTabs Investment Research.
Lowe's roughly 300,000 employees are "without question" the home-improvement chain's "greatest asset," according to their boss, CEO Marvin Ellison. He offered the shout-out at the retailer's annual shareholder meeting in May, crediting a 15% boost in the company's quarterly dividends to his workers' efforts.
Yet when thousands of those workers recently got the boot, they received no notice and no severance. Instead, Lowe's – a profitable company that spends billions buying back its own stock – offered the equivalent of two weeks "transition" pay to full-time workers, some with the company more than a decade. Laid-off workers were also invited to re-apply for jobs at Lowe's, though not necessarily for the the same pay.