How long till Amazon buys them out?

I won't lie, I'm done with dead tree books. I only buy them for other people as gifts.

Powell's was one of the first bookstores online; they should have seen this coming and acted accordingly long ago.

The beginning of the end, sad sad sad...

I still buy paper books, but I haven't bought a brand new $30 hardback in at least a decade. The dependence on this segment, and the inflation of the price in this segment, is of course the problem.

Powell's will be around for a long time, but their model/focus will have to change. It's still completely slammed every time I go. Doesn't feel like a dying business to me.

I agree with Blabby. I read constantly, and the e-readers just don't seem fun to use at all. But $30 is too much to pay, when you can get the same thing for $4 six months later...

I hope the one guy at the one Powells got fired; bearded asshole

One more in the Blabby/Reymont camp.

I agree with Blabby; every time I am in the Burnside location, even in the middle of the week, it is packed.

What I find astounding is that 31 workers is only 7 percent of their workforce. Which is still a lot of people to lay off, but I had no idea how many people worked for Powell's.

I love physical books and hate reading anything on any sort of screen. I will continue to support Powell's until the end, fuck Amazon--they don't do anything for Portland.

I wonder if any of the seat-warmers who've been there for 30 years, pulling healthy salaries, have been laid off?

Powell's going to be there for a long time. The place is always packed at all the locations and I'm sure they do a pretty good mail order business. I'm not convinced about e-readers simply because I hate them and most of the people I know with them used them for a while and have moved back to traditional books.

Yes, they are selling fewer new hardcovers. I think a bigger part of the problem is the over expansion of physical space. Sure, the store downtown is always packed; quite a lively business in fact! BUT-when was the last time you were in the Beaverton store? How packed was that place? Mr. Powell's team overstretched.

A damn shame for the workers. At 10 dollars an hour how much would you have saved in the last year? How much of a safety net can these folks have? Instead of this "buy a book day" everyone is retweeting people who care about workers should send some money for those folks. Will the union organize a fund?

@scrumyummy - Just to note because other people were confused about this, 31 employees is seven percent of their UNIONIZED workforce. Managers can't join the union, so it's less than seven percent of their total workforce. I don't know how many people they employ in total.

Smirk, why are you reporting on this? Where is book retail guru Paul Constant? Or lit/comic afficianado Erik Henriksen? Their silence on this topic seems cowardly.

Given their many blog posts/commercials championing e-readers like the iPad and Kindle and online sellers like Amazon, they would appear to own a portion of these local layoffs.

Which is clearly not to say Paul & Erik are solely culpable or don't also champion local retailers and creators. But each alt.weekly fanboy boner they've had for the aforementioned has had an impact on our local economy.

I look forward to both Paul & Erik weighing in on this news in light of their posts promoting online consuming and e-reading.

It's been ugly at Powells long before this and upper management has spent money on an outside marketing agency that hasn't done jack for the business. In addition employees used to have a greater say on what went in or out of sections as well is the pricing and other factors. Books have been grossly mispriced by people who don't know anything about specific books at the company's direction (Michael Powell himself actually priced a book at $1300 when it should have been $10). Over the last 2 years that depth of knowledge has been taken away from staff and the effects are bringing sales down along with the surge in e-book consumers. The business model at Powell's sucks. And sadly I believe the upper management & high ranking union members have been in on this layoff plan for a while.

I left Powell's a few months ago and am glad I did. That being said I really hope management can get their act together & re-invest in what will actually move the business in the right direction.

One last thing... busy doesn't equal business. Just because you may see lot's of folks shopping doesn't mean they're buying or buying as much.

Heheh
Well I'm a temp there now, and I've been holding out hope for one of those sweet union jobs and its accompanying benefits. So much for that idea. This is sad in so many different ways.

This is sad, and I do hope things turn around for them. Been going there all my life, buy about three books a month there. Good luck Powells, and anyone affected by these layoffs.

Just one more story in the City of Books....

They employ around 500 folks (at all locations give or take a few). I know it's hard to tell, but Powell's has been adjusting and learning how to survive in the new media world for a while, first with the online business, competitively pricing used books, customer loyalty incentives, and offering eBooks online. While they'd rather you buy directly from them, even partners with Amazon, and has for years. Come on - they are one of the last great independent businesses, America. At some point, consumers have to find loyalty. Oh, and Emily Powells needs to cut their top heavy management staff and start relying on their amazing and super knowledgeable staff to do the job they were hired to do. Yup.

Over the 8 years, they've cut the travel store out completely, downsized the "tech" store, Beaverton (probably should disappear), Hawthorne is kind of perfect, Cookbook...needs to get inventive with their space and take advantage of Portland's Foodie community (I've never bought a cookbook there - but I have bought a scarf). Sadly, the employees/people/you are to pay for the lack of book lovin'.

The Kindle, eReaders and such have no doubt ruined the new book industry. But even more to blame, are the people who stopped communing in their local bookstore, no longer bury their head in a good mystery or feel the need to hold these treasures close in a library. I wonder how long until we stop having discussions on the stories we read and just text emoticons to each other. LOL!

I'll keep shopping at places like Powell's til I'm dead. E-readers are just a really impotent alternative to having a full shelf of books to come home to, lend to a friend, lose and then have to go back to Powell's to buy another copy.

I worked at Powell's for about six months back in '03/'04, and took part in the strike when management tried to cut back on the medical insurance benefits. (They at least quit selling Che Guevara t-shirts in the downtown store just before that ... would've been sending rather mixed messages otherwise.) I quit soon after, and luckily was able to find a better-paying job.

Yes, management should be cut if the workforce needs to be cut this much. Share the pain, anyone? No? Couldn't a hiring freeze have been brought in, so that the staff could be reduced through attrition from resignations? Retrain people for other positions, if necessary, as positions open up?

BTW, Powell's management: if you're kicking workers out the door, it might be time to stop selling those "People's Republic of Portland" t-shirts at Hawthorne Powell's.

Powell's is likely saving as much money - per person in the respective worker/manager units - by freezing pay and 401(k) contributions for its managers, as it is saving by terminating 31 workers. The job-saving difference may be that Powell's had flexibility to limit pay and benefits for managers, as non-union employees with individual contracts. But not for workers, due to their collective contract negotiated by ILWU 5. The only choice with the unionized workers would likely have been to either reduce all workers' pay equally, or cut jobs.

Powell's cut jobs. But, I wonder if an across the board pay reduction was offered to the workers as an alternative to layoffs, and if so, if the union reps brought it to the workers for a vote? Does anyone know if this happened?

Powell's turned their back on Portland years ago, they out-sourced all their 'new' computer software to be coded in India and then had to hire Microsoft to make it work and in the middle of recession Michael Powell goes out and buys a Mazarati . . . EPIC FAIL! !!!!
There are plenty of really independent bookstores in Portland to spend your money at like IN Other Words on Killingsworth.

E-books and readers maybe a part of declining print sales, Amazon may be a part of declining sales in shops, and hordes of individuals selling on Amazon and eBay certainly are part (and drive down prices), but the economy overall is certainly a big factor. For folks who won't buy a $30 book - well, many don't have the money, and some would if they did. For the most part, the $4 book that was $30 four months ago is a popular book, or at least one printed by a trade publisher. Eventually many new mid-list titles like those will go away because publishers will not publish books that do not sell on the primary market, so there won't be any on the secondary market. The only new books will be GRisham level fiction and self help (psych, religious, exercise, cooking) books and then more expensive titles for collectors and serious non-fiction folks.

@s.mirk: thanks for the clarification! That is an important difference. Noted.

@Occam: That's quite a grim prediction. Publishers have already started "trimming the fat" so to speak, and the reaction that I've seen is that the smaller titles aren't giving up and shriveling away. Independent publishing has become more viable with POD printers lowering costs for the publisher. The literary landscape is definitely changing, but it isn't going away.

If the 401k matching is just now getting frozen, they can't be doing too poorly. Most companies stopped doing that indefinitely over a year ago.

Personally, I don't go to Powell's that often, but that's mainly because I can't ever get out of there cheaply and I'm constantly running out of bookshelf space.

Too bad they didn't announce this a couple weeks ago, when Multnomah County Library was accepting applications for employment. It'll probably be at least a year until that happens again.

@w9gMhnc4YRjBKdu_
You said: "why would I pay for a middleman like Amazon after Electronic books give me the ability to support the author directly?"

Most e-books are not sold directly by the authors but instead on Amazon and other e-book hosting sites. The authors aren't getting a larger percentage of e-book sales. In fact, I believe they are getting less. Instead, more and more money is being streamlined to fewer and fewer people. Capitalism at its worst.

To gain a better understanding of what's happening at Powell's we have to take a couple bits of data into consideration:

This year is a contract year, during which a new contract will be negotiated. Last time around, things seem to have gone pretty smoothly. I personally wasn't involved, so I don't really know. But it seemed like good sailing from the outside.

Emily Powell assumed stewardship of the company a short while ago, leaving her august father--a truly brilliant business man--to dodder around in warehouses with books and commute in his Maserati--though there's nothing wrong with driving a bitchin' set of wheels. From what I hear--purely hearsay, btw--Emily was a reluctant heir. Purportedly, her sites were set elsewhere and came to selling books to fulfill the wishes of her father.

Not unlike Michael Powell, she spent most of the afternoon--when the layoff were being enforced--hiding away in her office in the "gray building," a former co-worker told me.

My interpretation of the layoffs is two-fold:

1 -- Emily is sending a message to the bargaining unit that she's not fucking around, displaying no compunction about laying people off and making unpopular business decisions.

2 -- Sales, corporate-wide, are apparently in decline. I write "apparently" because the only thing the management at Powell's is loathe of beside bad publicity is revealing their numbers. Please to note that they never mention profitability. Powell's WON'T ever do that. When negotiating with a labor organization, if any of the negotiating party for the company explains that they cannot pay the wage the bargaining unit demands, they are then required to reveal their books. Powell's will never do that.

Something one should recognize, too, is that the results of a Dunn and Bradstreet report pulled on Michael Powell a little over 10 years ago by a labor economist during negotiations for Local 5's first contract showed that Powell's Books accounted for a surprisingly paltry 5% of his total personal income. This fact was largely overlooked during the organizing drive, Michael Powell framing his side of the organizing drive as a bunch of spoiled upstarts trying to beat down a humble bookseller.

I see these lay offs as a shot over the bow of Local 5. Also, I anticipate the upcoming negotiations to be maddeningly acrimonious.

MkUltra...I'm not sure what you are trying to prove. Lacking the "inside" information that you obviously have, I am struck by your threats. Are you threatening to walk out during contract negotiations? Whats the deal? From reading your post, I can see that you are bitter. Do you actually wish that Michael Powell left the company to you? Why?

As to your second point, I remember Powell's announcing that they were going to rebuild the front of the store before the economy collapsed. They haven't done that. If they were "profitable", wouldn't they have done it? You sound like another twentysomething scrub, like so many, that thinks they are entitled to something. In case you didn't know the law, private companies ARE NOT required to open their books to ANYONE. You have to read the writing on the wall: they closed the store in Pioneer Square...they had to move the store in Beaverton...they just shrunk the size of the Technical store...what about that shows a company grubbing profits?

As to the "report" on Michael Powell's earnings, do you know that an individual is not a corporation? Besides, that was ten years ago! As a customer of Powell's, how do I know that is still the case? In my industry, I happen to know a great deal of people who were "paper rich" during the boom that are bankrupt now.

From the sound of your post, I'd say that you are an employee of Powell's. My own speculation leads me to think that you are one of the "assholes" that I avoid whenever I go into the store. If true, and you are an anxious jerk that doesn't like seeing the breakdown of your "job", I'll say this:

If breaking that union will amount to me paying lower prices, I promise Powell's that I will spend MORE when it happens. You are a jerk, MKUltra, and: no!!!! I dont have any spare change for you.

As a long time resident of Portland, I'd rather see all of it go before I lose my access to the books. As someone who spent the entire 90s working with books, I am more concerned with Powell's survival as an institution than I am with you working there.

Please survive Powell's! Do whatever it takes!!! You are the best bookstore in America and nothing, short of "everything" going the way of E-Books, should stop you from being who you are - especially a bunch of whiny socialists that think they are entitled to something that they did not build.

I just don't think it makes any logical sense why powell's laid off us cashiers making $12 an hour and they are filling our shifts with non union, management workers making $20-$25 an hour. Doesn't seem like that is a sound business decision. I would certainly be happy to be back working behind the registers at $25 an hour. Seems like there is a bigger story here on what is behind this...

Troofiness got her panties in a right twist.

Regardless your moronic ad hominem attacks on me, pretty much 99% of your assumptions are incorrect. You might do well to read a little more of the facts before jumping on the ass of strangers while you hide behind the anonymity of the net.

Nowhere in my post did I threaten anything. My prediction is that the contract negotiations will be difficult and contentious. It's a prediction and not a threat.

I throw out some observations, the likes of which rub you the wrong way, and you descend on me like a feral cat on a darting mouse.

Finally, allowing my own assumptions about you, I presume you are one of those "assholes" the employees at Powell's try to avoid; along with other retailer around Portland.

Move to fucking L.A.

You'll feel more at home around your own kind, butt-clot.

At the membership meeting the union said they offered to let the workers vote to postpone wages to help save the company money but the company never even responded to the offer. But then no managers are laid of because they freeze their wages?!? I know i would gladly have postponed my wages if it would have saved my fellow union coworkers jobs like it did for management.