Posted on: Friday, July 30, 2004

AT&T's layoffs include 72 at Honolulu center

Advertiser Staff and News Services

AT&T laid off 72 workers at its telemarketing center at Waterfront Plaza in Honolulu, a union official said yesterday.

The layoffs this week were part of an AT&T purge of at least 500 employees in four cities nationwide Tuesday as the company begins its pullback from the residential phone market.

The nation's largest long-distance company announced recently that it would stop spending an estimated $1 billion annually trying to win new residential customers and, instead, would focus on telecommunications and data services for businesses and services like high-speed Internet for homes.

Christina Huggins, an executive vice president for Local 9415 of the Communications Workers of America, said AT&T released 72 workers in Honolulu — 58 hired for a three-year "term" and 14 temporary workers. The term workers were laid off before the completion of their three-year stints, Huggins said.

About 120 union and non-union employees remain at the Waterfront Plaza location, Huggins said. Wages for workers represented by the union in Hawai'i range from about $600 to $1,100 a week, she said.

AT&T spokeswoman Kathy Oram confirmed that jobs were cut in Honolulu. She would not provide an exact figure, however, saying only that the number was below 100. Oram also said an undisclosed number of employees would remain at the telemarketing center to field customer service calls.

Huggins said there is still concern AT&T may close telemarketing centers, including the one in Honolulu, as it restructures. She said the call center has been at Waterfront Plaza since the 1980s.

"There's no indication yet" that the Honolulu office will close, Huggins said. "But we know those decisions are currently being made."

There were layoffs also at telemarketing centers in St. Louis and in Lee's Summit and Marietta, Ga.

Judi Sterns, president of Local 6450, Communications Workers of America, said about 270 St. Louis workers were laid off and 157 in Lee's Summit. Another 60 Lee's Summit staffers were transferred to lower-paying jobs, the union said.

Sterns said the Lee's Summit workers were term employees. The St. Louis employees were not permanent, either, she said.

Sterns said she expected no further job cuts and "we're taking care of the existing residential customer base."

The call center cuts are the latest in a long series nationwide for AT&T. At the end of 1999, the company had 148,000 employees; by the end of last year, there were 61,600.