LITTLE ROCK — A company that in 2008 said it planned to hire as many as 500 people at a call center in Jonesboro notified all of its 223 Arkansas employees there Monday that the center would be closed in 60 days if it could not find new customers.
In a news release, Denver-based StarTek Inc. said the possible shutdown is “the result of a change in work requirements at the site.” StarTek spokesman Rosemary Hanratty said she had no additional information to explain that statement.
“We are actively looking for replacement business for the site,” Chad Carlson, president and chief executive officer of StarTek, said in the release. “We have a trained workforce and an experienced leadership team in place with skills applicable for other clients. We will be working hard to find new business for the site.”
Hanratty said the company’s 223 employees in Jonesboro are trained in customer service and StarTek is trying to find new customers to keep them employed, but if no one is found in the next 60 days the center will close.
Federal law requires companies that employ more than 100 people to give 60 days notice before closing.
StarTek also announced Monday that it is closing a plant in Decatur, Ill., that will affect an additional 157 jobs.
In April 2008, StarTek said it had signed a lease to operate the Jonesboro call center in a 55,000-square-foot former grocery store at 2908 S.
Caraway Road. The employees answer inbound customer-service calls primarily for companies in the telephone, cable and satellite industries.
In December, the most recent month available, Craighead County had a not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate of 6.4 percent. The state’s not-seasonally-adjusted rate for December was 7.4percent. Seasonal adjustments generally make slight changes to the figures to account for normal fluctuations, such as during the Christmas shopping season, but adjusted December numbers weren’t available for Jonesboro.
According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, StarTek said the two plant closings could reduce the company’s revenue for the first and second quarters of 2012.
According to StarTek’s third quarter earnings report, it lost $19 million through the first nine months of last year, compared with a $12.8 million loss through nine months in 2010.
Revenue fell 16 percent to $168 million through nine months last year, compared with the same period in 2010.
StarTek isn’t scheduled to release its fourth-quarter and year-end report until next week.
Its stock price closed Monday at $2.46, down 39 cents, or 13.68 percent, on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has been below $6 for the past 52 weeks.
Information for this article was contributed by David Smith of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Business, Pages 23 on 02/14/2012