Best Buy Restructure Means 8,000 Demotions

The in-store Best Buy restructure in recent days amounts to the demotion of up to 8,000 senior sales associates, with big salary cuts for most of them. That's according to a note to investors by brokerage firm Sanford Bernstein, as cited by the Wall Street Journal.

In the Journal story, a Best Buy spokeswoman termed the Sanford numbers "on the high side," and declined to get into specifics on other numbers. She also emphatically denied that Best Buy's restructuring was in any way analogous to Circuit City's 2007 mass layoff/demotions of sales associates.

The Best Buy restructure, which followed headquarters buyouts by the company late last year, was termed a "kind of re-shifting of talent," in which Best Buy "completely revamped our retail operating model," spokesman Justin Barber told Dealerscope earlier this week.