Levi To Furlough 1,000 Employees

Clothing maker Levi Strauss will lay off about 1,000 employees nationwide this year in an effort to cut $80 million in costs, the San Francisco Examiner reported Wednesday.

The company’s 5,000 salaried employees were told of the coming layoffs through an e-mail message Tuesday afternoon, said Vice President Dave Samson.

Samson would not say which jobs would be pared, but all the reductions will affect salaried employees, half of whom are based at the company’s San Francisco headquarters and elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay area.

Many of the layoffs will be achieved through attrition and early retirement packages, he said.

“As we looked at our overhead costs, it became clear that we couldn’t achieve our goals without cutting some positions,” he said.

Levi Strauss, the largest clothing maker in the world, employs about 26,000 people nationwide.