THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 13, 1995 TAG: 9501130508
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Bell Atlantic Corp. on Thursday announced the first fallout in Virginia from a previously announced plan to eliminate 5,600 jobs over the next three years: the closing of three service centers in the state, including one in Virginia Beach with 55 workers.
The regional phone company announced last August that it would slash its work force in order to cut costs. It said new competitors are forcing it to become more efficient.
The cuts announced Thursday are the beginning of its long-term plan. The company said that across its mid-Atlantic territory about 1,700 jobs will be eliminated by 1997 in customer-service centers for residences and small businesses and in its pay phone and operator-service unit. The remaining 3,900 job cuts, which Bell Atlantic hasn't yet specified, will be in other operations of the company.
The Virginia Beach center is located on one of the five floors that Bell Atlantic occupies in its office building at 5701 Cleveland St., alongside the Norfolk-Virginia Beach Expressway.
By mid-1996, its functions and the functions of another 55-employee center in Roanoke that serves small businesses will be consolidated into a Richmond office, said Paul Miller, Bell Atlantic spokesman. Another small-business center in Falls Church will be unaffected, he said.
In addition, Miller said a directory-assistance center in Leesburg employing 59 will close late this year or early in 1996.
In spite of the cuts in Virginia Beach, Miller said there is a possibility that Bell Atlantic will shift some other jobs to the city or other cities in Hampton Roads from the closings of residential-service centers in other states. Bell Atlantic now employs about 1,800 locally.
Miller said that the phone company will try to help workers whose jobs are being eliminated in the initial three Virginia centers targeted for closing to transfer to other positions.
He insisted that Bell Atlantic's customer service will not suffer as a result of the consolidations.
``We are going to be introducing new systems in these lines of business that will actually help us operate more efficiently and improve service,'' he said. He said that Bell Atlantic has had a problem with ``different computer systems that don't talk to each other,'' and that office consolidations will help eliminate such incompatibilities. by CNB