Virgin Mobile: 100 Posts — One-Fourth The Staff — Could Be Cut, Or None At All
Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) might slash its roughly 400-person staff by one-fourth as the company seeks to rebound from poor quarterly earnings numbers. But spokeswoman Jayne Wallace also said no decision had been made about whether layoffs would occur and called today’s VentureBeat report that the company might cut 300 jobs “off-base,” adding, “we barely have that many employees in the entire company.” The MVNO has about 400 staffers, she said.
Wallace also told mocoNews the company is considering outsourcing some functions handled at its Walnut Creek, CA.-based headquarters and other offices around around the country but there were no plans to single out a location. Up to 100 positions could be eliminated, she said. The outsourcing option was discussed in an 10-k filing, Wallace said. The filing, dated March 17, said Virgin Mobile USA expects to open a new call center in Managua, Nicaragua later this year. It also said that in the future, the company may enter into outsourcing agreements “for the development and maintenance of certain systems necessary for the operation of our business.”
Wallace also insisted the proposed outsourcing was not related to Virgin Mobile USA’s disappointing quarterly earnings performance, noting that despite coming up short in its Q4 subscriber growth targets, the company did swing to a profit by the end of 2007. Wallace: “Cost savings is not the only reason companies look to outsource. One of the reasons could be to improve technological abilities. Other options include looking at technology partners. Our employees were told that this was being looked into. We might not lay off anyone. It’s in fact inappropriate to place any number on people that might be impacted since we have not made any decisions about anything at this point. There’s simply no way to know any of these details until decisions are made about what if, what, who.”
This is bunch of crap, they fired me and outsourced the entire American work force to the Philippines and Nicaragua letting go 160,000 workers and you are bitching about 100 people letting go now! The fact is the reason they are loosing money is because less then a quarter of their new staff can speak or understand the English language and so the customers are on their own, since they can not get customer service they will go with cheaper service. Look, thats why they lost the JD Powers award the year they outsourced the work force. I hope the CEO get captured by some terrorist that he paid with the American workers hard earned cash and skinned, then left in an Afghan desert to dry in the sun like jerky!