220 more jobs to leave city

From the Daily News:

Edwin Mercado will still have his job at the Duane Reade warehouse in Maspeth, come this time next month.

His wife, Guadalupe, is not so lucky.

She is one of 120 unionized workers set to be laid off the first week of December, with another 100 pink slips looming next spring.

Walgreens, which bought Duane Reade in 2010, is moving some of its distribution operations to a larger, more modern facility in Connecticut.

At 470,000 feet, [their Maspeth] warehouse is too small to accommodate the volume of tractor trailers and trucks coming and going each day, the company says, noting it will keep 180 workers there.

“We cannot compete with New Jersey and Connecticut, where you have so much more space,” said Pedro Cardi, the business agent for Teamsters Local 210, which represents the workers. “The ergonomics of Maspeth don’t work.”

Companies drop off their goods at the warehouse on 55th Ave., where they are packed up and loaded into smaller trucks for distribution to individual stores.

But the volume of deliveries coming into — and going out of — the facility has become unmanageable.

Workers acknowledge the company has tried to help them find new jobs and sent them to job fairs. It’s been difficult to find replacements for the jobs, which pay roughly $12 to $13 an hour.

Company officials said they even allowed potential employers to visit the warehouse and interview employees who are losing their jobs.