Miami Herald parent lays off 117 call center workers

If a D_B, my apologies. I will remove if it is.

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/v-print/story/188745.html


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Posted on Wed, Aug. 01, 2007
Herald parent lays off 117 call center workers
BY JANE BUSSEY
Some 117 call center employees at the Miami Shared Services Center run by McClatchy Co., which owns The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, got lay-off notices Tuesday after the company decided to outsource their jobs.

The call center, which is inside The Miami Herald Media Co. building in downtown Miami, handles customer service and circulation-related calls -- such as wet newspapers or single-copy complaints. The jobs will be phased out over the next 12 months and the work will be outsourced to APAC Customer Services.

The Deerfield, Ill. company, which provides customer support services to Fortune 500 and other companies, operates eight customer care centers in the United States and four offshore centers in the Philippines.

McClatchy also gave lay-off notices to 114 employees at a second Shared Services Center in Columbia, S.C., bringing the total of jobs to be outsourced to 231.

''We can't keep pace with companies like APAC that are focused solely on developing their systems to meet the needs of their customers,'' said Martii Salazar, director of human resources for Shared Services.

The call center for El Nuevo Herald customers will remain in Miami for the time being. ''We don't have a solution for them yet,'' Salazar said. ``We will keep them internally until we find a solution.''

The Miami call center handles customer service matters for two McClatchy newspapers and five newspapers owned by other newspaper groups. In Columbia, the call center handles customer service for eight McClatchy newspapers and three non-McClatchy papers.

''[Employees] realize this is a cost-effective decision for the company,'' Salazar said. ``The outsourcing decision is one the company did not make lightly, but we've chosen a provider that is an industry leader.''

Salazar said that although the call center had done ''a great job over the past 10 years,'' it had become outdated.

Terry Whitney, vice president of circulation for The Miami Herald Media Co., said McClatchy was outsourcing the jobs because the company does not specialize in call center operations.

''This is going to be over the course of many months, almost a year because we have contracts with other newspapers and we have to continue to provide the service,'' said Whitney, adding that severance packages would be available to the furloughed employees.

McClatchy Treasurer Elaine Lintecum said that the Sacramento-based newspaper and Internet publisher does not favor across-the-board layoffs as a cost-cutting solution. ''This is not an across-the-board layoff,'' said Lintecum. ``It's a decision to outsource a limited amount of work to a vendor who has expertise in this area.''

The entire newspaper industry has seen profit margins fall in recent quarters because of a drop in advertising revenue, although the industry as a whole remains profitable. McClatchy stock closed Tuesday at $24.42, down 17 cents on the New York Stock Exchange.