Comcast to Cut 59 Jobs

Many people know Comcast for its cable television service or maybe its high speed Internet. The company is going to be cutting back on 59 workers at its location in Fischer, Illinois. These job cuts are coming from a facility that only employs about 270 workers on the whole, so the job cuts are going to be just under ten percent of the total work force at the current location.

Job cuts of this magnitude are more then enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current guidelines. 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.”

Interestingly enough the company’s latest press release is not about the cut off of the jobs, but about a new offering for the companies customers. Here is an excerpt from that release, “Comcast and Disney/ABC Television Group today announced that Xfinity TV customers can now access three new authenticated TV+ products – WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney XD and WATCH Disney Junior — at home or on-the-go — via a suite of new innovative apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and online at WATCHDisneyChannel.com, WATCHDisneyXD.com and WATCHDisneyJunior.com.  The three new WATCH products are the first-ever to provide authenticated users with both access to live, linear network streams as well as an extensive offering of advantaged window “on demand” episodes.”

The company has given no official word on the layoffs at the current moment outside of the worlds in this official statement made to the state government, “Comcast today announced an organizational change to a portion of our Fishers Call Center operations. The change will reduce the number of inbound sales positions, due to the phased plan to grow customer billing support jobs at this facility. Impacted employees who qualify are being offered the opportunity to transition to billing positions within Fishers or to a position within the company. We are hopeful that a majority of those employees will successfully transition to one of those openings.” Patrick Paterno, Director of Public Relations, Heartland Region Comcast  Our hope is that the majority of employees impacted by today’s news will find other positions within the company and continue their careers with Comcast. We will be working with each impacted employee to help as many as possible find a new role, either in Fishers or across the company if they are willing to relocate.” So, on the bright side there is some hope that these workers will be able to recover some of their jobs, even if it is not in the same location or the same position that they had in the past. Given the current economic conditions this kind of help is welcome to most of the people who are getting laid off.