Ricoh Continues Layoffs At Boulder Co. InfoPrint Plant

[Anonymous]

Ricoh Continues Layoffs At Boulder Colorado InfoPrint Solutions Plant

Japan-based Ricoh Co. on Thursday conducted layoffs at its Boulder InfoPrint Solutions facility, a company official confirmed.It is unclear how many people were affected. InfoPrint spokesman Peter Lazaroff said the company is "doing some reductions (Thursday)," but declined to disclose a number.

Earlier this year, Ricoh officials announced plans to realign the firm’s production print resources operations, form a new entity called Ricoh Production Print Solutions and move the InfoPrint Solutions headquarters to West Caldwell, N.J., from Boulder. Ricoh anticipated the workforce reduction would affect 9 percent of its 109,000-person global employee base.

At the end of July, InfoPrint employed 700 people in Boulder, company officials told the Camera at the time. In 2010, InfoPrint had 725 employees locally.Lazaroff on Thursday declined to provide a current headcount of the Boulder operations.

When Ricoh announced the headquarters move and restructuring plans in April, Lazaroff told the Camera the workforce reductions affect all departments of InfoPrint. Lazaroff has confirmed rounds of layoffs that occurred in the months since, but declined to disclose the extent of each action.

The relocation and reductions at InfoPrint’s former headquarters mark a milestone in the history of IBM’s Boulder campus, which has housed printing operations for more than 45 years. Ricoh acquired a majority interest in the IBM printing systems division for $725 million in 2007, fully acquiring the outfit during the subsequent three years.

Ricoh leases about 400,000 square feet in four buildings at IBM’s Boulder campus. Mike Stratton, a spokesman for IBM-Boulder, said Ricoh’s lease remains in place and the square-footage has not changed.

As of Thursday, InfoPrint had not filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice with the Colorado Department of Labor, said Bill Thoennes, a department spokesman. Under the federal WARN Act, employers are required to report mass layoffs to state labor departments.

Events that would trigger a notice include: a plant closing that would cause the layoff of 50 or more workers; a mass layoff of 500 or more people in a 30-day period; a mass layoff of 50 to 499 employees if the amount of affected employees represents 33 percent of the employer’s active workforce; or if the employment loss of two or more groups of workers reaches a WARN "threshold" level in a 90-day period.

The WARN Act covers primarily the loss of full-time jobs as its workforce thresholds do not count employees who worked fewer than six months in the past 12 months or those who worked an average of 20 hours per week.

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October 25, 2011 at 7:31 AM