Bass Pro fires 11 in companywide restructuring

“I said, ‘You’re firing me,’” she said weeks later. “I felt like the life had been sucked out of me.”

Parker, 60, a broadcast specialist who did media-buying work in Bass Pro’s marketing division for more than eight years, was told her position had been eliminated because of companywide restructuring. She said rumors of layoffs started swirling last fall, when Bass Pro started cutting back on things like nonessential travel.

When holiday sales fell short of the mark, the prospect of layoffs was almost certain, she said.

“We had been told for three or four weeks that there was possible reorganization, and that duties were likely to change because of the economy,” Parker said. “We kind of had to tighten our belts.”

Bass Pro spokesman Larry Whiteley said 11 employees have been fired since the beginning of the year as part of a restructuring effort. He dispelled the notion that the retailer of fishing, hunting and outdoor gear was responding to a weak economy or weak sales.

“It has nothing to do with the economy, or we wouldn’t be opening stores,” Whiteley said.

Bass Pro has 49 stores open and nine under development. The latest news is in Alabama, where developers said March 17 that Bass Pro will anchor the $1.3 billion retail and commercial Sweetwater development in Decatur, Ala. Bass Pro is tentatively scheduled to open there in late spring 2009, according to a report in The (Athens, Ala.) News Courier.

Whiteley wouldn’t comment on the company layoffs beyond a prepared statement that read, in part: “In the annual process of reviewing our business, we have determined that the changing landscape of the retail environment causes us to consolidate the roles and responsibilities of some positions within our organization and to outsource other duties.”

According to the statement, firings occurred at the Springfield headquarters and at stores around the country. It also said Bass Pro had added employees at its headquarters since Jan. 1, and that the restructuring wouldn’t jeopardize store openings.

Bass Pro employs about 13,000 people, and nearly 3,000 at headquarters.

Carol Hall, a 25-year Bass Pro veteran who lost her job the last week of January, doesn’t chalk up the company’s restructuring to retail trends.

“I just think it was a matter of trying to curb costs and get them under control,” she said. “People need to clean house every once in a while.”

Hall, who coordinated merchandising activities among catalog, wholesale and Internet divisions, said she was shocked when word arrived.

“Oh yeah, it came out of nowhere,” she said.

Hall said she was not given a reason why she was fired. She was told, however, that she could get another job at Bass Pro based on future openings. Both Hall and Parker said they are looking outside Bass Pro for new jobs, and they believe their roles have been absorbed by their former colleagues at Bass Pro. Parker said her media-buying duties were scaled back in 2005 when Bass Pro started outsourcing much of its media buying to MPG, a Chicago-based division of French communications company Havas. This year, Bass Pro started working with Chicago-based agency Starcom MediaVest Group, she said.

Both women received severance packages, and Parker said hers was for 13 weeks of salary and insurance coverage.

Springfield Business Journal called seven people reportedly fired by Bass Pro. Only Parker and Hall responded to interview requests, and both said they did not sign gag clauses as part of their severance agreements, a practice Wonders of Wildlife museum has recently enacted, according to a March 15 Springfield News-Leader report. The museum, which is shut down for renovations and additions including a physical connection to Bass Pro’s Outdoor World, required more than 40 employees laid off since December to agree not to make disparaging remarks in accordance with their severance letters, the report said.