Two major retailers close, terminate workers

One week before many of their workers were planning to celebrate the winter holidays with loved ones, two major retailers announced they were officially closing all store locations. The Columbus, Ohio-based discount department store Big Lots! publicly revealed Dec. 19 they were officially closing all their shops, while Party City made a similar revelation the very next day.

Most store employees learned about the news either while at work or through media coverage on their day off.

Big Lots! started closing many of its locations earlier in the year. According to an article in USA Today on Dec. 20, more than 400 stores already closed in 2024, and the company also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The decision to close some of their stores and file for bankruptcy was part of a tentative sale agreement with a “private equity” firm known as Nexus Capital Management LP.

As vulture capitalists, private equity firms are only interested in capital gains for their investors. Nexus Capital decided at the last minute that the assets belonging to Big Lots! were not valuable enough for purchase, and the sale failed. Months after management made false promises to workers that the 900 remaining stores would stay open, Big Lots! bosses declared those stores will also close.

In addition to terminating thousands of retail workers, over 500 employees at the Big Lots! headquarters in Columbus are also being let go.

The Party’s over

Party City workers face similar hardships as Big Lots! workers. Headquartered in New Jersey, Party City is considered the largest retailer of party supplies throughout North America and Puerto Rico. Much like at Big Lots!, the closure will impact thousands of Party City workers.

While the reason each retailer is closing is different, workers at both chains were caught off guard, and they are feeling the same pain. Party City’s financial issues for the prior two years drove management to declare bankruptcy in January 2023. Nevertheless, Party City bosses had routinely told workers and shoppers that the company was doing “fine.”

Party City announced that all stores would be officially closed by Feb. 28, 2025. Workers are furious the company had no transparency nor gave fair notice.

Capitalism is to blame

Most Big Lots! and Party City employees are women and/or LGBTQIA2S+ workers. Store closings will negatively impact communities of color and working-class neighborhoods the most. The elimination of Big Lots! will particularly hurt working-class consumers who rely on the store for food, furniture and other home goods at a reduced price.

In many small towns throughout the Midwestern, Appalachian and “rust belt” regions, as well as the South, Big Lots! is one of the only stores that exists — and one of the only employers.

Workers World spoke with a young African American woman who has been a retail worker at a Big Lots! location in Charleston, West Virginia, for two years.

She said, “We got the news the same day you all [the public] did. Other than that, we don’t know when they are officially closing or if there is a date set yet.”

She also vented, “They constantly play holiday music, and it is hard for us to be in the ‘holiday spirit’ when we all know we are going to be losing our jobs.”

When retail, restaurant and other chain franchises close, no other company replaces them. Workers are being displaced at a higher rate than in the past. Unfortunately, workers at Big Lots! and Party City are unorganized and have less ability to fight back when compared to the workers at Amazon and Starbucks who are currently waging an organized battle against those monopoly chains.

Business closings, layoffs and mass unemployment are features of the rotten, profit-driven system of capitalism. Socialism, on the other hand, is an economic system that prioritizes full employment and ensures working and oppressed people can afford to celebrate the holidays with friends, family and comrades. Instead of having a happy holiday season this year, workers at Big Lots! and Party City feel like they are experiencing a “holiday massacre”!