Verizon Wireless laying off former Alltel headquarters workers in Arkansas after takeover

Verizon Wireless lays off former Alltel workers

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Verizon Wireless laid off more former Alltel Corp. headquarters workers Thursday, saying the jobs were redundant after its acquisition of the Arkansas-based wireless provider.

Verizon Wireless declined to say how many workers were being let go in the latest layoffs, but said they were in areas such as finance, marketing and legal.

“Those are strictly redundancies we’ve identified due to the transition,” Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Lucie Pathmann said. “As we said all along … there were going to be redundancies.”

Many workers bolted for other jobs when Alltel first put itself up for sale, and top Alltel executives were let go immediately after the $28.1 billion sale was completed in 2008. Little Rock-based Alltel had over 3,000 employees in Arkansas at the time.

Verizon Wireless had said that many upper-level workers would be kept on for a time so they could help with transition work, such as moving Alltel’s customers to Verizon Wireless’s system and handling divestiture of some properties.

Since the buyout, many high-paying jobs have been eliminated because those duties were already being at handled New York-based Verizon Wireless’s other hubs. In the first half of this year, Verizon Wireless laid off about 200 former Alltel headquarters employees.

Pathmann said workers laid off Thursday and in earlier waves were urged to fill out online applications “and come back to work for Verizon.” The company will be hiring for the rest of this year and into 2010, she said.

Verizon Wireless’ operation in Little Rock has been adding workers in other areas. “On balance, the overall numbers are not bad,” Pathmann said, though she said she could not give specifics.

The company opened a call center in Little Rock, which it said in July would have 1,200 employees. Pathmann said there were also positions other than lower-paying call center positions for which Verizon Wireless is hiring in Little Rock.

“The more we grow the business, the more opportunities we will have for not only laid-off employees but the community at large,” she said.

Pathmann said the company has no specific target number of workers for Little Rock, adding that positions are created when a need is determined.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.