Incomplete list of U.S. internet/high-tech job destruction announcements from April to June 2015
Misleading for profit technical school DeVry is shutting down at least 12 campuses in Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and Florida! Apparently DeVry has decided to move courses from brick -n-mortar classrooms to the internet.
Arkansas: Pulaski Technical College blaming what I call Disappearing Students Syndrome for forcing them to shutdown their west Little Rock (wLR) campus. In Fall 2014 they had a total of 510 students on the wLR, but for Spring 2015 only 362 students attended classes on the wLR campus!
California: Irvine based Local.com is now chapter 11 bankrupt busted, blaming it on a sudden crash in web traffic. Sunnyvale based rent-utility electronic payment service PayNearMe failed to raise the crowd funding they wanted and laid off an undisclosed number of employees. They also canceled their rent payment service located in Family Dollar stores. Also in Sunnyvale, NetApp issued a layoff WARN, 125 jobs lost in July! In Milpitas, SanDisk issued layoff WARNs for June & July, 88 jobs lost. In Mountain View, OnLive issued a layoff WARN saying 98 people will become jobless by June. Mountain View based software company Intuit eliminated 399 jobs! Is it connected to its recent takeover of Brazil based ZeroPaper? Santa Clara based computer chip maker Intel officially confirmed massive layoffs across several states. An internal Intel memo read “Yes, we are implementing headcount reductions” in Arizona and Oregon, but did not give numbers. The mass layoffs are blamed on crashing computer sales. Computer chip makers Broadcom and Avago reportedly laid off employees in Orange County, due to their $37-billion USD merger. In Burbank, Disney-ABC canceled plans to replace 35 InfoTech workers with foreigners. This comes after hundreds of former Disney IT workers in Florida revealed they were forced to train their foreign replacements! In Santa Ana, ITT Cannon revealed they laid off 10 more employees than they originally WARNed about. Palo Alto based Hewlett-Packard (HP) warned of more layoffs. HP is in the process of eliminating 55-thousand+ jobs by October, that’s 28-thousand more than the original publicly announced mass layoffs! LAN company Extreme Networks eliminated 285 jobs! Company administrators are trying to cut $40-million USD in costs by relying “on our channel partners” to get the job done. In San Ramon, AT&T Global Customer Service issued a layoff WARN for July, 89 jobs lost. Tech company Avago has taken over networking company Emulex, several WARNs issued saying at least 88 Californians will become jobless in August as a result. Local news reports say San Francisco based BitTorrent laid off 40 people. In San Francisco and Santa Clara, social media gaming company Zynga laid off 364 people! Company administrators say they need to cut $45-million USD per year, due to crashing sales. In San Jose, Cypress Semiconductor finally issued several WARNs revealing they killed off 146 jobs back in January! Riverbed Technology issued two layoff WARNs for June, saying 160 people will become jobless! In Irvine, Western Digital Technologies issued a layoff WARN for June, 115 jobs lost! Advanced Micro Devices issued a layoff WARN saying 85 people will be laid off in June. In Burbank, Deluxe 3D-Stereo D issued a mass layoff WARN saying 227 people will become jobless in June!
Colorado: Meridian based money transfer company Western Union shutting down all its operations in Greece, supposedly temporarily. Fort Collins based Advanced Energy (AE) announced it is fleeing the solar power business. Hundreds of people will be laid off! Administrators blame crashing sales of their solar power inverters, they even revealed they tried to sell off their inverter operations but none of the potential buyers were willing to pay what AE administrators wanted for it! However, one administrator slipped up and revealed the shutdown is really about making profits for ‘investors’: “…over the last six months, we concluded that focusing solely on our Precision Power business, and exiting the Solar Inverter business aligns with our long-term goal of maximizing value for our shareholders.”-Yuval Wasserman, CEO
Florida: After three years of operations, Jacksonville based non-profit crowdfunding venue One Spark laid off all but three employees. Administrators blame it on a lack of “focus”. In Orlando, it’s been revealed by former U.S. employees of Disney that they were replaced with migrant workers. 250 U.S. citizens have been laid off at the Disney amusement park in Florida, since October 2014! An unnamed former employee said they were forced to train their foreign replacements: “I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly. It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job! I still can’t grasp it!”
Georgia: In Atlanta, after eight years video game store UGAME shutdown by the landlord, who made a deal with next door Papa Murphy’s to allow them to expand into the UGAME space. Atlanta based global payment processing company First Data announced it will eliminate “a few thousand” jobs and shutdown their smaller offices this year! Some of the U.S. job cuts will be the result of ‘offshoring’ of those jobs to other countries. Administrators didn’t explain why, but said that despite increased revenues they need to cut $200-million USD in operating costs per year.
Idaho: In Idaho Falls, after repeated denials Curtiss-Wright Scientech laid off an undisclosed number of employees. No WARN has been filed with state employment administrators, but the Idaho Department of Labor says they’ve heard rumors of layoffs since October 2014: “We don’t have any official numbers at all. Just simply word-of-mouth is about 30 people, or so.”-Christopher Saint Jeor, Idaho Department of Labor
Illinois: Chicago based maker of video game devices and electronic slot machines WMS Gaming issued a WARN saying 247 people will become jobless in June! It’s the result of the merger of Scientific Games and Bally Technologies. WMS Games was taken over by Scientific Games in 2013.
Minnesota: Minnetonka based food processor Cargill laid off 45 more IT (information technology) employees, blaming the not recovered economy.
New Jersey: Woodbridge based tech company RCC Consultants now chapter 11 bankrupt busted. The company is so broke they admitted they haven’t paid their employees: “As of the petition date, employees are owed approximately $1.3 million (consisting of 4½ missed payrolls). Officers, performing as employees, are owed approximately $1 million (consisting of 10 missed payrolls), and have not been reimbursed for business expenses totaling approximately $250,000.”-Mike Hunter, CEO
New Mexico: California based computer chip maker Intel is planning on massive layoffs, causing concern for employees at its Rio Rancho operation. News reports out of The Land of Enchantment say Intel has already reduced its Rio Rancho workforce by 1-thousand since 2013!
New York: NYC based Digital First Media forced its puppet operator New England Newspapers to layoff 10 employees of local newspapers in Vermont and Massachusetts. NYC based Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic) is now the owner of AOL, expect massive layoffs. NYC based start up company Quirky gave up on its ‘smart’ home products company Wink, laying off 30 people and putting Wink up for sale. NYC based Time Incorporated blasted their managers for apologizing to employees who are being laid off! At least 11 of their U.S. jobs were off-shored to Philippines. Local news reports say a total of 80 IT (information tech) workers for Time laid off. A manual on how to fire employees was issued to Time Inc. managers, and somebody leaked it to the news media, it stated “Don’t say you’re sorry”. Solid State Advanced Controls (SSAC) issued a WARN saying they will shutdown their Baldwinsville op by the end of the year, 47 jobs lost. In North Syracuse, Seneca Data Distributors (owned by Arrow Electronics) amended their 2014 WARN, yet again, this time pushing their shutdown to September. They are joining the mass exodus from The Empire State and moving to Arizona. In Melville, Arrow Electronics announced their exodus from The Empire State by issuing a WARN saying they are moving to Colorado between June 2015 and March 2017, taking 135 jobs with them!
North Carolina: AB Tech announced it will shutdown the Haynes building and the Technology Commercialization Center on its Enka campus. News reports say AB Tech is prepping the Enka campus for sale. It’s blamed on the loss of $2-million in county taxpayer funding. California based NetApp laid off 2-hundred Research Triangle Park employees! Local news reports said the announcement was a “surprise”. Local news reports say Lenovo administrators refused to talk at first, but then admitted they were eliminating the jobs of 235 former IBM employees! It’s the result of Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s System X ops. Software company ChannelAdvisor admitted it laid off employees, but refused to say how many.
Oregon: In Springfield, California based Symantec laid off 175 people! Symantec has been laying off employees on a regular bases as part of their plans to offshore their software security ops. More revelations about California based computer chip maker Intel, and the massive job destruction about to hit The Beaver State; the county of Washington gave Intel a record setting $2-billion in tax breaks! But wait there’s more! None of those tax breaks were connected to creating jobs! All that was required was that Intel keep the vague promise of maintaining economic security. News reports say there are 18-thousand Intel workers in Washington County, and Intel plans on cutting $300-million in operating costs, which will include cutting jobs. Analysts are reporting that Intel is already pushing employees to voluntarily quit. The Oregonian says the layoffs are a combination of crashing sales and Intel’s $17-billion USD takeover of competitor Altera. Netflix is going ahead with their May shutdown of their Hillsboro call center, saying the remaining 68 employees will become unemployed. Last year news reports said 188 people worked at the call center!
Texas: Arizona based Avnet shutting down its Coppell eCycling operations, at least 71 jobs lost. Administrators blame the bad economy for forcing them to consolidate operations. In Wichita Falls, the WDS Global-Xerox call center shutting down “because it is no longer sustainable.” 257 jobs lost by August! News reports say back in 2012 the call center employed 423 people, apparently 171 jobs had already been eliminated before the shutdown announcement, and this after city administrators gave WDS Global $3-million in tax breaks and cold hard taxpayer cash! Houston based FMC Technologies announced at least 59 layoffs planned for its Schilling Robotics locations in California, Texas, and Scotland.
Virginia: ObamaCare forced tax-sucker General Dynamics to layoff 137 InfoTech workers! Those information technology employees were supporting the Healthcare Quality Improvement Systems contract to “monitor and improve utilization and quality of care for Medicare and Medicaid”. General Dynamics lost the contract.
Washington: Redmond based Microsoft revealed it laid off “hundreds” of employees! Administrators say it’s just one more round of layoffs in their plan to eliminate 18-thousand jobs by the end of the year!
Google demands “economic assistance funds”: 3rd Q 2015
WARN=Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification
Former employees who receive severance are not counted as unemployed