First Data Technologies to Cut 344

The odds are good that most of you have never heard of a company called First Data Technologies. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they choose to describe themselves, “Around the world, every second of every day, we make payment transactions secure, fast and easy for financial institutions, merchants and their customers. We leverage our vast product portfolio and expertise to deliver solutions that drive our customers’ revenue and profitability.” Apparently the company hopes to be able to do all of that without a serious portion of its workforce.

The company is getting ready to cut back on about 344 workers in the state of Kentucky. The company filed a notice with the Office of Employment and Training in the state of Kentucky to let them know that the jobs would be cut in the near future. This kind of a notice, known as a WARN notice, is requires whenever a mass layoff action is going to take place in any state in the USA.

Those cuts are more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current guidelines set forth by the federal government, which is why the paper had to be filed before the layoffs could actually take place. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

While the notice was filed with the state on the 13^th of this month the company has not released a public statement about the loss of these jobs. The most recent press releases from the company was an announcement of a new product launch, “First Data Corporation, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing, today announced the First Data PCI Rapid Comply^SM solution, an easy-to-use online Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) and vulnerability scanning tool that can help small to mid-sized merchants achieve and maintain Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance. First Data is the first payment processor to offer the convenience of this type of integrated service directly to its customers.”

Sadly, these are not the first, or the worst cuts to the state of Kentucky has had to endure in recent months. Some of you may recall our earlier coverage of cuts to the University of Kentucky, but for those of you who missed out on that here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “The disturbing part is that the layoffs, which apparently began late in the month of May have been done with a swift finality and coldness. According to a report filed by a reporter for Kentucky.com the school has been very curt with its workers, they wrote, “…she and six other employees were summoned one by one to the dean’s office, told about their layoffs, handed a sealed letter, given a 5-minute informational lecture and instructed to be out of the building in 10 minutes. “We were locked out of our computers, our university email deactivated, escorted to the exit door in front of our colleagues at mid-morning with as much of our personal belongings as we could hold,” Radford said in an email to the Herald-Leader. “We could not even check our office calendars to see what student appointments were scheduled for later that day and that week.’” Not very nice behavior for a man who urged his staff to treat impacted workers with “dignity and compassion.” Apparently, he does not believe that idea should apply to him as well.”