Calais call center to close its doors About 80 ICT workers to lose jobs

Telemarketer ICT Group Inc. will close its Calais call center at the end of March, leaving about 80 full- and part-time employees out of work.

The 3-year-old Calais center is one of five ICT centers in Maine. The company offered no comment on whether the Calais closing would affect its other operations, including its 100-employee Pittsfield center.

It also has centers in Lewiston, Oxford Hills and Wilton.

ICT announced in December that it planned to move more of its operations outside the United States.

On Friday, employees at the ICT center on North Street in Calais learned that on March 28 the company plans to cease operations in the city.

City Manager Linda Pagels said that although she had not received official word from corporate headquarters, she learned of the closure from company officials locally.

ICT officials in Calais referred all telephone calls to its corporate headquarters in Newtown, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb.

“I am just calling to let you know that the company isn’t commenting this time on the situation,” an ICT spokesman said Monday.

Some current and past employees said the announcement was not totally unexpected.

One employee, who asked not to be identified, said that over the past few months there was less and less work at the center and that some employees were sometimes sent home early.

For months now, there have been reports that the company had problems keeping staff.

The only severance package the company is offering, one employee said, is vacation pay to qualified employees.

Although company officials had no comment, the ICT Web site said the company is moving more of its operations “offshore.”

“As a result of the overall shift in our industry to greater dependence on near-shore and offshore operations, combined with the capacity utilization issues we have experienced in the fourth quarter, we believe it is now prudent to accelerate the development of ICT Group’s operations outside the United States,” said John Brennan, chairman and chief executive officer.

“Accordingly, we will be scaling back a number of our centers in the U.S. and Europe to better position the company for future growth and enhance profitability,” Brennan said in December.

Pagels said she had not given up on ICT Group. “We certainly will do what we can do to work with them,” she said.

She also said she had notified Gov. John Baldacci’s office.

Baldacci’s spokesman, Lee Umphrey, said Monday evening that the governor plans to speak with ICT officials today to get a better sense of why jobs were being cut and to try to convince the company not to do so. He said the state Labor Department and its Rapid Response Team will be ready to assist the workers.

ICT Group describes itself as a multinational telemarketing company that sells on behalf of Fortune 500 companies. It claims about 11,000 employees.