Mar 2009 Financial News

More job cuts. Sagicor sending home 75 workers; Shipping Association trimming too

Mar 27, 2009

At least 75 more Jamaicans are to join the unemployment line by the end of the month as the global economic crisis continues to take its toll on local businesses.

The latest in a line of redundancies are employees of life insurance heavyweight Sagicor Life Jamaica (formerly Life of Jamaica) and the Shipping Association of Jamaica (SAJ).

Yesterday, the multinational Sagicor announced that it was cutting 42 employees across the Caribbean and the US, including 10 in Jamaica with a further 65 to be axed by month-end, in what the company said was a comprehensive organisational restructuring.

Later in the afternoon the SAJ announced its intention to chop staff effective March 31. However, the exact number was not disclosed. That, the company said, would be made public by March 31.

"We wish there was another way. It is not an easy decision to terminate the employment of workers, particularly at a time like this," SAJ president Roger Hinds said in a news release. He added that the SAJ would seal its fate as the employer of labour at the Port of Kingston if it failed to respond to the declining circumstances of customers and its own declining revenues.

Earlier, a statement from Sagicor, which employs approximately 3,000 people across its network, said that the company is to axe a further 65 positions in Jamaica apart from the 10 that went yesterday.

"This will be done by the end of March," Carl Williams, vice president group marketing, Sagicor Life Jamaica, told the Observer yesterday, adding that the 10 positions already made redundant were at the management level.

The major casualty in the second round of cuts is staff at the former Blue Cross of Jamaica health insurance company.

"All 65 will come from the former Blue Cross," Williams disclosed. "After that there will be no Blue Cross."

Sagicor, last July, bought the group health insurance portfolio of Blue Cross after a contentious battle between both firms for management of a $2-billion Government health insurance scheme.

According to Williams, the operations of Blue Cross, which currently has 200 employees, would now be fully assimilated into Sagicor as the company shed its duplication of responsibilities.

Such a move, he argued, was the only prudent business decision to make at this time.

"We told staff from the onset that we were going to put it (Blue Cross) under the Sagicor umbrella," Williams said. "We now live in an economic environment requiring a company that is lean and flexible to be able to remain competitive."

The sale of Blue Cross' former Hope Road office is also a viable option for Sagicor as all health insurance administrative operations would be concentrated at the company's New Kingston head office.

"Selling the property is an option, but it could also be used as a service centre only," Williams said. "We are not yet decided."

Sagicor in its statement said that the Group would continue to review its operations over the next six months to ensure it had the most appropriate structure and processes in place.

The company said that in its effort to focus its lines of business and better utilise its managerial resources it had reassigned several managers across borders within the Group, and more recently introduced a matrix management structure.

This type of business restructuring during times of economic difficulty has become a harsh reality that is currently being dealt with by many businesses, said the statement.

"We are implementing this process with integrity and respect for the dignity of our colleagues who have been dislocated, and have sought the relevant advice to follow best practice," the company said.

Sagicor, which acquired Life of Jamaica insurance company in the early 2000s, boasts US$4 billion in assets from operations in 22 countries, including several in the Eastern Caribbean as well as Barbados, Belize, the Netherland Antilles, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, and the US.


Source:
Jamaica Observer
Friday March 27, 2009

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20090326T220000-0500_148243_OBS_MORE_JOB_CUTS_.asp