Comcast to shift up to 1,000 jobs

Comcast announced Tuesday that it would shutter three Northern California call centers and consolidate them into other western U.S. centers in a few months, a move that will affect as many as 1,000 jobs.

Operations at the cable company’s call centers in Livermore, Morgan Hill and Sacramento will be shifted to centers in Oregon, Washington and Colorado at the end of November, Comcast said.

The approximately 1,000 employees at the three sites apparently will be offered a chance at jobs in the new locations.

“We will work with displaced employees should they wish to relocate to the jobs outside of California,” said Andrew C. Johnson, regional vice president of Comcast California. “For those employees who cannot find a place at Comcast, we’ll provide severance benefits and outplacement assistance.”

The company, which is headquartered in Philadelphia, said it had notified the workers, the state and the call center communities of the moves in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

“Decisions that impact a Comcaster’s livelihood are never easy, and we’ll do all that we can to ensure those affected employees receive all of the transitional support we can provide,” Johnson said.

The company’s announcement of the consolidation cited the “the high cost of doing business in California” as the impetus for the decision.

It noted that the number of Comcast employees handling customer calls would not decrease even though calls from Northern California customers would go to out-of-state operators.