SABRE Layoffs
Can anyone add some more detail to the following report gathered from
the net a while back ? If anyone can please
let us know.
"Sabre completes Day 4 of layoffs
By D.R. STEWART Tulsa World Staff Writer 9/1/00
Employees were escorted out of their offices by security officers.
Sabre Holdings Corp., the $2.4 billion Dallas-based travel reservations company, completed the last of 650 layoffs of
information technology workers in Dallas, Tulsa and other locations Thursday. Company executives said they expect to lose
another 600 workers through attrition by year's end.In the fourth day of a major shakeup related to a refocusing of
Sabre's business on the corporate travel and Internet markets, dozens of Sabre employees in Tulsa and Dallas were escorted out
of their offices and off company property by security officers, company executives and employees said.
"The layoffs are across the board and companywide," said Sabre
spokesman Theda Page Whitehead. "About 440 were laid off in Dallas, 185 in Tulsa, 20 in Winston-Salem (N.C.) and smaller
numbers elsewhere. It's around 650 total.
"This was a tough decision. It was not made lightly. It was made after significant analysis that included benchmarking with
our competitors and our peers, and discussions with hundreds of our employees."
Whitehead said workers who are losing their jobs are being offered a cash severance payment, 90 days' worth of medical
benefits and job and career counseling. Sabre employees said the cash settlement amounted to two weeks' pay for every year
of service.
Any unused accrued vacation pay will be paid at the usual daily
rate of pay," Whitehead said.
Sabre announced Monday that the company would trim 1,200 jobs
from the payroll across all job classifications. Sabre executives said the cuts would save the company $100 million a
year, beginning in 2001.
"This initiative is an important and integral part of implementing our strategy and ensuring that we maintain our
leadership position as the premier technology company for the travel and transportation industries," said William J.
Hannigan, chairman, president and chief executive of Sabre.
"We are also shifting our strategy in IT (information technology) services to meet the increasing demand for
sophisticated value-added services," he said. "We are pursuing a business model in IT that will allow us to leverage our
strengths in the software application, reservations hosting and Web hosting areas.
"We will no longer go it alone for facility management opportunities. We will instead partner with complementary IT
firms to bid for such contracts, emphasizing the scalability and standardization of our industry- leading IT software."
In recent years, Sabre, which employs more than 10,000 people
worldwide, with about 6,300 in the Dallas area, has targeted the IT outsourcing market for airlines and travel companies.
Sabre executives hoped its "multimillion-dollar" 1997 contract
with US Airways to perform nearly all the airline's IT functions for 25 years would thrust Sabre into the driver's
seat as the industry's preferred IT provider. But that has not happened.
In Tulsa, where Sabre employs about 2,000 people at Tulsa International Airport and several office buildings around the
city, the layoffs have been rumored for weeks, current and former employees said.
Sabre workers have been calling and e-mailing Tulsa World reporters since Monday, when the layoffs began. Most spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Some workers who have been laid off are bitter about the lack of notice and the cursory manner in which they were dismissed.
Others said they are relieved the anxiety is over.
"It's an uncertain environment, which makes it tough to work in," said an 11-year employee who lost his job this week. "It's
not cruel and unusual (punishment) when they put the needle in your arm, it's cruel and unusual not knowing."
"It's a 1950s corporate culture in a dot-com world," said another. "There are more people flying today than at any time
in history, and Sabre is losing money. How can they be losing money? There are 8,000 other companies making money at IT
(information technology) outsourcing, but Sabre can't make money? Why?"
The husband of a Sabre employee who lost her job Thursday said
his wife had hoped that turmoil at the company was over. Staff
shakeups in recent weeks, Hannigan succeeding Michael Durham as
CEO and the company's spinoff from AMR Corp. in an initial public offering in March were thought to be positive
developments, he said.
"They just can't figure out what they want to do at higher levels," he said. "My wife thought it might be getting better,
but it doesn't seem to be."
A Sabre retiree said he is concerned about his former company.
"We feel so sorry for our co- workers, but when they lost all potential contracts with other airlines, it was obvious they
had too many people," he said. "If they are going to change the business, becoming more Internet oriented, they will have to
hire some people who are more familiar with that business."
I don't suppose losing the big outsourcing deal for British Airways to
Amadeus has helped this situation much either.... (15/03/2001)
