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Iowa City,IA Reviews:
 ·Mediacom
| WorldCom layoffs 150+ in Iowa This story was printed from Gazette Online
»www.gazetteonline.com
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WorldCom layoffs hit home
By Dave DeWitte and James Q. Lynch
The Gazette
Friday, June 28, 2002, 4:36:43 PM
The fallout of WorldCom's financial woes hit home Friday, as more than 100 employees were given their walking papers at operations in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.
Employees were called into meetings shortly after arriving for work Friday. By 9:30 a.m., a trickle of laid off workers exited the offices of WorldCom and its MCI units, some of them still unsure why their jobs were singled out.
WorldCom said 100 positions were eliminated at its various WorldCom and MCI operations in Cedar Rapids and up to five positions were eliminated from a MCI call center in Iowa City. Another 35 positions were cut in Sergeant Bluff, where the company employed 1,200. Fifteen were in Davenport, where 230 were employed.
"Everyone has been so stressed out for the last couple of months they don't have the energy to care today," said Gamaliel Thomas of Iowa City, who lost his job as a network engineer at WorldCom's downtown Cedar Rapids tower.
Thomas said he was not bitter as he carried a box of personal items to his car.
WorldCom dropped the bombshell Tuesday that it had misreported almost $4 billion in ordinary expenses as capital expenses, artificially inflating the company's earnings. Company spokesmen insisted the announcement was unrelated to Friday's layoffs, which had already been in the works. Some employees felt Tuesday's revelations will mean more layoffs to come.
"The people who are still there are not sure if they're lucky or not," said one terminated employee of MCI World Markets in the Armstrong Centre, Cedar Rapids. "We got severance. The next round of layoffs may not."
The employee declined to give her name, fearing WorldCom might withhold her severance benefits.
The local cutbacks were achieved in four areas: Technology, discontinued operations, contract employees, and the non-replacement of employees leaving of their own accord. The company would not elaborate, but said the cutbacks would not affect service to customers.
WorldCom has announced plans to lay off over 20 percent of its global work force, about 17,000 people. The 150 layoffs in Iowa were only 3.5 percent of the company's total Iowa work force of 4,300.
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack pledged state assistance to WorldCom's laid-off employees, and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley asked the U.S. Department of Labor to provide assistance.
The governor's office had discussed with Workforce Development a worst-case scenario for WorldCom layoffs, said Ted Harms, head of the department's Dislocated Workers Unit. He said the layoffs were not as deep as feared.
Finding new jobs in the weak telecommunications employment market won't be easy, according to local employment services.
"It's going to be a little tight," said Lisa Griffin, manager of Manpower's Cedar Rapids branch. She said former WorldCom employees may have to change careers or take temporary employment until they can find something in telecommunications.
Several MCI and WorldCom employees said they liked working at the company, and would hate to leave the area.
"I'll look here, at ACT and some of the independent consulting firms," said Thomas, the network engineer. "Or maybe I'll be working double shifts at Target."
Others were more confident.
"I'm not worried," said Devin Miller, a former WorldCom test engineer in Cedar Rapids. After being terminated Friday morning, he loaded up his SUV to go golfing.
Married with a daughter, a new house and a new car, Miller had already begun searching for jobs on a Internet job board Thursday night.
"I think I'm highly-employable," Miller said. "I'm 30 years old, I'm an electrical engineer and I have 13 years in the military."
Miller described the severance package as having a minimum of eight weeks' pay, and said it should be enough to tide his family over until he finds a new job.
Terminated employees seemed to accept that WorldCom's mounting financial woes made layoffs necessary. Several felt WorldCom executives shoulder some of the blame, however.
"I wholeheartedly believe it is something (former WorldCom CEO) Bernie Ebbers is at least partially responsible for," said a terminated employee as she left the Armstrong Centre. "I don't think he was the right guy to be running the company. He did not seem to respect the employees or keep them informed."
The former MCI employee said Ebbers seemed to grow the business too quickly. She praised replacement CEO John Sidgmore, saying he has tried to keep employees informed.
Thomas said he was disappointed about the "state of the company overall."
"It was a great company," he said. "Even with the economic downturn, WorldCom was one of the better companies out there.
"Then came the accounting scandal and that's pretty much out of my control," he said. "Now we're paying for that."
The best advice Chuck Roe, Manager of Cambridge Careers Inc., Cedar Rapids, could offer laid-off WorldCom employees was to begin searching for a new job immediately.
Roe advised workers to have resumes prepared professionally, seek outplacement counseling, and get prepared to "speak positively about themselves."
"They've got to learn to sell their sizzle," he said.
All local content copyright © 2002 by The Gazette Company, Cedar Rapids, Iowa | |
Reviews:
 ·Verizon Broadban..
| I'm, glad the state has stepped up to help out. However being a former Nortel guy we lost 50,000 people, no sav package, and no hope for any type of job in the near future. I didn't see any state step up for us when we got cut and we are more than double WCOM's. This only makes finding a job even harder since the market will be flooded to higher levels. And as far as unemployment goes its a joke 169.00 a week, please who can live on that when you have a house 2 kids and cars. I hope and pray for those honest WCOM employess that they find jobs soon. Oh and one more note, don't bother going to your local Walmart,Target,MC'dess, or any other "busywork" since they are flooded with mexican's that will work for minum wage or less if the company can getaway with it. Its not a crack on mexican's but the truth.
Good luck
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