ENON — Layoffs have begun at Speedway’s headquarters in Enon as part of a larger workforce reduction of nearly 900 employees as the company continues their transition after being bought by 7-Eleven.
>>RELATED: 7-Eleven buys Enon-based Speedway division from Marathon for $21 billion
7-Eleven announced nearly 880 layoffs are coming to two Speedway support centers, one in Enon and the second in Irving, Texas, a company spokesperson told News Center 7 Friday. The exact number of layoffs coming to the Enon facility was not released.
The $21 billion acquisition of Speedway from Marathon was completed about a year ago and 7-Eleven has been analyzing changes needed after the purchase, the spokesperson said. In August 2020, news broke of the convenience store giant’s purchase of the Speedway corporation from Marathon Petroleum.
“As with any integration, our approach includes accessing our combined organization structure. The review was slowed by COVID-19 but is now complete and we are finalizing the go-forward organization structure,” the 7-Eleven spokesperson said in a statement.
While the company spokesperson said customers shouldn’t notice any difference when they pull into a Speedway store or gas station, the same can’t be said for people at Speedway’s corporate headquarters in Enon.
News Center 7 spoke with a woman named Wendy who said her mother had been laid-off just days before.
“And they have been laying off most of the entire building and they are walking them out when they lay them off. Most of the building is being laid off, from VPs all the way down,” she said.
Other newly unemployed workers and their families believe more layoffs will be coming next year. Additionally, other families News Center 7 spoke to pointed out 7-Eleven and Speedway did not follow state guidelines to announce layoffs on the state’s Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) site. News Center 7 was also not able to find any announcements posted to the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services site.
Former workers said they’re getting two weeks severance pay for every year with the company, but family members of those recently laid-off said there’s a hold-up.
“They are not paying them, they’re not getting paid until 60 days later before they receive their severance,” Wendy told News Center 7′s Mike Campbell.