A top executive of Sprint-Nextel was in Denver on Wednesday with a soothing message for the company’s local employees: Don’t worry about layoffs.
The concern is real among the company’s 2,600 Colorado employees, 800 of whom work in call centers in Lone Tree and In verness. Others work in downtown offices, make sales calls to business clients or drive technician trucks.
“I’m not going to say the jobs are guaranteed to stay here,” Sprint-Nextel chief operating officer Len Lauer said. “But I’m fairly confident.”
Sprint and Nextel merged two weeks ago, and the combined company employs roughly 80,000 people nationwide.
Nextel laid off 270 workers from its In verness call center last October, said former Nextel employee Robert Moreland, who added that some of the jobs were sent to Canada and India.
At Nextel, Moreland got $15 per hour and health benefits. Now he earns $8 an hour, without benefits, with a temp agency.
“It’s insulting,” he said.
Sprint-Nextel expects to achieve $12 billion in cost savings, Lauer said, in part by integrating the two companies’ overlapping sales forces.
“It will play out over the next two years,” he said.
Colorado’s telecom industry has shrunk from 49,000 workers in early 2001 to 30,000, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
Qwest, MCI, Level 3, Nextel and AT&T have all steadily shed local workers.
The good news, Lauer said, is that local Sprint-Nextel consumers will see improvements in cellphone call quality and new product offerings.
Sprint-Nextel, with 40 million consumers the nation’s third-largest wireless carrier, will eliminate most roaming charges and the 45-cents-per-minute fees when consumers go over their monthly minute allotments.
The Sprint and Nextel networks rely on separate technologies, but Lauer said the company will offer handsets next year that can use either network.
Staff writer Ross Wehner can be reached at 303-820-1503 or rwehner@denverpost.com.
