In 2008, the majority of employees at Dell’s Ottawa call center got their walking papers. In June of 2009, the rest of them followed suit. And here in March of 2010, Convergys gets ready to feel the pinch. I wrote about it before, when I first read about it. Now, though, it looks like we’ll be seeing a pretty significant change from business as usual when a door closes in the faces of several hundred employees.
Ottawa City council passed a motion just days after the cuts were announced, urging city staff to enter talks to see what might be done to keep the jobs here.
A few days later, a conference call between city people, the Contact Centre Association of Ottawa and provincial and federal bureaucrats was held. It was decided that they needed to find out more information from the company about the skill level of their staff.
Well now. The city never offered to get involved when Dell closed, nevermind the provincial or federal governments. Although to be fair, it doesn’t sound like Ottawa center management has altogether much faith in its front-line agents in the first place, so perhaps that’s the difference.
Paul Carr, operations manager for Convergys in Ottawa, tells CTV “close to 200 people have already left Convergys. Six hundred are still here and about 200 will still be working here after the cuts.”
Carr actually expected more would have left already, but people in the contact centre say these are not the most highly-trained people and so job options are rather limited..
Now now, that wasn’t very nice, Convergys staffers. Even if it might be true–hey, I’ve seen the results of some of Convergys’s training; I get to say that. Besides, it’s my blog.
Good to know the city’s finally thinking about doing something though to at least compensate folks for, or help them to deal with, the layoffs. How why didn’t that start happening two years ago? Anyone know?