Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Nextel vendor owned call center to close; 185 to lose jobs

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 05:33:14 -0400

EXCLUSIVE REPORTS
Nextel vendor owned call center to close; 185 to lose jobs
Operations to be moved to West Coast as part of company consolidation.
Susan Lundine
Associate Managing Editor

LAKELAND -- Affiliated Computer Services Inc. (NYSE: ACS) plans to close its call
center in Lakeland on Dec. 2, leaving 185 employees without jobs.

"We are consolidating operations," says Lesley Pool, spokeswoman for the
Dallas-based company. The Lakeland call center's operations will be moved to the
West Coast, she says.

Hugo Davis, general manager of the Lakeland call center, was out of town and could
not be reached for comment.
Affiliated Computer is a Fortune 500 company with nearly $4 billion in annual
revenue and more than 40,000 workers worldwide.

It provides business process and information technology outsourcing services to
commercial and government clients worldwide.

The affected workers in Lakeland provide customer support for inbound calls for
Nextel Corp., which provides cellular phone service.

"We still perform the work," Pool says. "We still have the client. This is being
done for business efficiency. It's not a reflection of
industry change."

The employees were notified in a series
of meetings, says Pool. They have been
given full severance packages and have been offered job
training. Affiliated Computer also has
been holding job fairs for them, she says.
Jim DeGennaro, director of business
development for the Polk County
office of economic development,
says his agency never likes to
hear about an existing company
closing or laying off employees,
but there still is a great demand for
call center personnel in the county.
"We believe they'll be easily
assimilated back into our work force,"
he says.

Polk County, which has a 7.4 percent
unemployment rate, has about eight major
call centers that each have between 200 to 2,200
employees, DeGennaro says.
"It's an emerging industry," he says.
"In the past, call centers tended to go
to larger metro areas such as Orlando
and Tampa. But they're
looking at other markets today."

That's because they'd rather have 200-400 workers in several smaller communities
rather than 1,000-2,000 concentrated in one large

city, says DeGennaro. "They want to spread their work force out because it's a
high turnover business."
The consolidation comes a little more than a year after Affiliated Computer bought
the Lakeland call center operation at 1010 E. Rose St.

from Cyber Rep. Pool says the building is leased, and the landlord has been
notified about the closure of the call center.

Affiliated Computer was founded in 1988 by Darwin Deason and provides services to
the education, energy, financial, government,
health care, retail and transportation industries.

Its stock has a 52-week range of $32.70-$56.56. It had a $306.8 million profit for
its fiscal year 2003, which ended in June.
http://orlando.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2003/10/13/story4.html?t=printable

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