Oct. 15—POTTSVILLE — Fifty-seven people will lose their jobs at a distribution center in East Norwegian Twp.
A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice posted Wednesday on the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry’s website states that Beauty Systems Group LLC, otherwise known as Cosmo Prof’s distribution center, will close Dec. 16.
“Nothing you can do about it. It sucks,” Camden Deibert, 19, of Pottsville, said Friday of his job at the distribution center.
Deibert has been working at the site, 210 Industrial Park Road, in the Saint Clair Industrial Park for about a year. He started working there for the good pay — about $20 an hour — and steady work.
The location is a distribution center that ships out beauty supplies.
Sally Beauty Holdings Inc., headquartered in Denton, Texas, a retailer of professional beauty products, owns Sally Beauty Supply and Beauty Systems Group. CosmoProf is a Beauty Systems store, according to sallybeautyholdings.com.
Deibert said that about a week or two ago, people from corporate headquarters came to the building and called a meeting to announce the closure. He said two locations would be closing — the one in Schuylkill County and a site in another state which he didn’t name.
“They are opening a bigger one in Texas, and that one is going to take most of the work,” he said.
After the meeting, Deibert said, people were crying.
“It was bad,” he said.
Deibert said the company is offering severance pay based on length of service. He isn’t too worried about getting another job immediately.
A letter from Latoya Alexander, senior legal counsel, labor and employment with CosmoProf, sent to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry dated Oct. 11 said 57 employees would be affected. Alexander wrote the facility will be closed permanently on or about Dec. 16
“We expect the separations to be permanent. There is no union representative, and there are no bumping rights,” the letter said.
In all, Alexander wrote people from the following departments are expected to be laid off: a senior warehouse manager; three warehouse supervisors; 30 picker and packers; seven receivers; one material management warehouse lead; one return processor; nine forklift operators; a maintenance supervisor; one custodian; and three inventory control specialists.
A phone call and email to Jeff Harkins, vice president of investor relations and strategic planning with Sally Beauty Holdings, were not answered.
The Schuylkill County Parcel locator lists the owner of the building as LTKLP with an address of PO Box 378, Orwigsburg.
An employee of the CosmoProf store at 532 Pottsville Park Plaza, Pottsville, said the store is not closing.
Contact the writer: [email protected]; 570-628-6023
