Best Buy, the multinational retail chain headquartered in the US, has been the subject of several controversial activities, as of late.

Less than a week after a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing went public detailing the company backing down due to pressure from a known conservative think tank to begin screening donations to LQBTQ+ nonprofits, hundreds of employees have been laid off, affecting both corporate workers and in-store employees. A decline in projected revenue and a changing work landscape are the proposed reasons behind this “snap” (a term used by Best Buy employees to explain mass layoffs), with this projection in revenue being based on sales recorded in the previous quarter. Given this reasoning, one would expect layoffs to be a natural response—yet, in an earnings call from late February, the CEO of Best Buy, Corie Barry had said, “[w]e are confident that our industry will return to growth after two years of declines”. His confidence probably also rested on the knowledge that the company was about to proceed with mass layoffs. Why, then, would a company confident in industry growth, decide that downsizing is their best option? Could there be a different reason for these layoffs?

Since the COVID-19 lock-downs began, many retailers, including Best Buy stores, have switched to a delivery method of distributing purchased goods. Customers order items off of the retailer’s website, then drive to a physical store location to pick it up or wait for their purchases to be delivered to their home. When restrictions began to lessen in late 2021, Best Buy introduced a subscription service, “Totaltech”, which provided free delivery and standard installation with hardware purchases. This resulted in the need to hire more skilled labor (known as Field Agents within the company’s Geek Squad division) to make up for this increase in installations. The unexpected cost of training and loss of revenue from paid installs resulted in “major losses” according to Best Buy, leading to a major snap hitting in 2023 and a change in the service from “Totaltech” to two separate subscriptions, “Plus” and “Total”, neither of which provide free installations.

Layoffs occurred once more in April of 2024, this time hitting even more Field Agents, some of whom have worked for the company for more than a decade. What did these workers get for their years-long commitment to the company? Next to nothing. The company then merged several field positions into one, giving those who remained more work for little to no additional pay. New expectations are placed upon those who “survived the snap”, and are even re-opening these new positions rather than moving the employees who know the skills, effectively resetting both their pay and time at the company if they wish to reapply.

Only a few days before this massive Geek Squad layoff, Best Buy’s “Customer Care” (i.e., customer support) team was massively downsized as well. Most of these jobs were moved overseas to reduce costs, demonstrating the company’s desire to save money at the expense of its employees.

Both of these restructurings follow a change in management, where a focus on making additional profits through subscriptions and credit card sign-ups is placed above the ability to do the work. Once again, the motives of capital are prioritized over the needs of workers; the demands of the workload on the job only seem to increase, and the workers are forced to live with being minimally compensated for the time they’ve sold to the company.

Though citing increased sales online and record profits over their historic average, Best Buy still does nothing to compensate their long-term employees, instead opting to fire them and rehire them in lower-paid positions, regardless of experience.

Once again, the needs of capital prove to be irreconcilable with those of the workers, and the proletarians’ individualist illusions of finding “a place in the sun” in either capitalist society or the company are destroyed. In fact, there seems to be nothing new under the sun.

There is hope for these employees, however. Discussions between employees have led them to the idea of unionizing their workplace. Having a union could ensure job security, even if corporate management makes profit-driven restructuring decisions. With a union, those selling the products, those installing them, those servicing the installations, those building and maintaining the company infrastructure, those who are providing their labor to allow the company to exist, the working class of Best Buy, can ensure future stability for workers. While layoffs are inevitable due to the instability of the capitalist economy and its tendency toward crises, union contracts can include provisions for severance or re-hire, preventing some of the actions Best Buy has recently taken.

Organizing in a union, according to class methods and principles, would offer them greater protection from further layoffs and worsening working conditions. Not absolute protection, since capitalism, in order not to sink into the crisis of overproduction, marches in the direction of maximum exploitation of the working class. Workers must march in the direction of strengthening their trade unions and linking up with their revolutionary political party if they do not want to have their lives destroyed by this social system, first by exploitation and then by imperialist war.

Unionization in the workplace is a positive fundamental step, but it is only the first of a longer path. The second, equally necessary, is to organize in the union by crossing company boundaries, then category or trade boundaries, and then territorial boundaries, in a process of broadening the unity and cohesion of the working class, which is not an abstract statement but means the ability to strike in unison. We can only hope that the workers will make the right decision in the interest of themselves and their fellow workers, not that of management and the ruling class.

For this process to be accomplished in the most effective, rapid and robust way, the presence within it of communist workers, organized in the union fraction of the communist party, is indispensable.