Over the past few months, Verizon appears to have gone on a bit of a spending splurge with the acquisition of a number of companies, among them the huge $4.8 billion deal to acquire Yahoo. In contrast to this, though, the company is actually increasing its cost-cutting efforts in order to reduce spending and today is no different.
The largest carrier has confirmed plans to shut down a total of seven call centers situated across seven states, a decision that affects nearly 3,200 jobs, not all will be cut, though, with a significant amount being offered a relocated position. As part of the closures, Verizon has decided to close down both their Rochester and New York City centers in New York, as well as their Wallingford and Meridan centers in Connecticut, their centers in both Bangor and Lincoln which are situated in Maine and Nebraska respectively, as well as the Racho Cordoba center in California. Regarding which jobs will stay and which will go, California’s workers will be offered jobs elsewhere, with travel costs of up to $500 being offered in order to visit their future offices, along with a $10,000 relocation package if they choose to accept the offer. If the employees decide on not making the move they will be offered severance packages. Moving on to the New York positions, around 800 jobs will be lost along with a further 550 in Connecticut, 320 in Nebraska and 200 in Maine. The majority of other jobs will be relocated and employees will be offered similar packages to those in California.
Verizon says the reason for the closures is so that they can maximize the output from their current office spaces. All of these cost-cutting efforts are due to the fact that competition from rival carriers is constantly increasing, so the pressure is constantly on to maintain high profits. This is also the reason the carrier is pushing its online media services, which have been backed up by the acquisitions of both AOL and Yahoo in order to help the carrier become a prominent online media provider and help broaden their services into areas that are still experiencing relatively speedy growth.