ATI to Cut Jobs

If ATI is a name that you are familiar with then the odds are good that you have spent a lot of time watching the commercials on daytime TV shows, but if you are not that kind of person, or for those of you who are just not that familiar with the company lets begin by taking a look at how the company has chosen to describe itself, “For more than three decades, ATI Schools and Colleges has operated schools throughout Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma with the primary objective of preparing its graduates for rewarding careers. These exciting employment opportunities include such fields as health care, personal fitness and wellness, business technology, information technology, automotive repair, air conditioning and refrigeration repair, and welding. At ATI you are a member of our extended family. Faculty and staff work with you to achieve your educational and career training objectives and secure the necessary skills you need to be successful in today’s competitive workplace environment.”

This week the company notified about 184  that their jobs were in significant danger of being lost as the company makes moves to reduce its operating costs and works to make itself more fiscally sound. These kinds of job cuts are enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal 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, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in
workers being separated from their jobs. 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.”

The company put out a release about the changes that outlined some of the details about the job cuts, but they did not talk about the job cuts to come in any real way, “Today ATI Schools & Colleges announces the wind-down of operations at the Dallas Maple Avenue, Lewisville, Richardson and Waco campus locations.  Specifically, ATI will no longer enroll new students at these four locations. The wind-down of these campuses will be concluded when all active students fully complete their current program of study as scheduled. “ATI continually strives to ensure that we fully meet the outcome expectations of our regulators as well as position ourselves to successfully assist our students and graduates,” said Sue Edwards, Chief Compliance Officer, ATI Schools and Colleges. After careful analysis and consideration of each campus and program, it was determined that in certain markets ATI needed to reduce the number of programs and campuses.”

As you can imagine this is not the only private higher education provider to be cut from the payrolls. For those of you who missed out on our coverage of cuts to DeVry here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “DeVry Inc. is getting ready to cut back on 570 jobs in order to set its balance sheet to right. The
company cited some downturned finical numbers, with up to $19 million less in revenue then experts outside the company were expecting. To that end the school is most likely going to be inciting several mass layoff actions, as these types of layoffs are going to be spread about the schools campuses.”

Even more traditional post secondary education is not immune to the job cuts, for those of you who do not recall our earlier coverage of cuts to Kaplan University here is a look that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “How many people will be getting the axe? Well according to official reports the company is getting ready to be rid of about 200 workers when all is said and done. While that is only about two percent of the overall number of staffers that the company employs on the whole, it is still more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines.”