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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

UPS to offer incentives to trim 650 employees
Atlanta set to see most cutbacks

The Courier-Journal
By Bill Wolfe
bwolfe@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

UPS will offer buyout packages to 650 employees this week to cut "redundant positions." Workers at the company's Atlanta headquarters are expected to feel the brunt of the cutbacks.

The offer, focused on management workers, is being made to "a very small group of employees" who work either at the company's headquarters in Atlanta or in its Supply Chain Solutions unit, which has employees across the country, spokesman Norman Black said.

Supply Chain Solutions, which handles inventory management and distribution for other companies, has a growing presence in Louisville, but its management is concentrated in Atlanta. The buyout is separate from a plan announced in October to cut 1,200 of the 32,000 supply-chain jobs. The offers will go to employees who are at least 50 years old and have been with the company for at least 10 years, Black said. Hourly workers will not be eligible.

"It would be impossible for me to speculate" how many people in Louisville might qualify to receive the offer, he said. UPS Airlines is based in Louisville and the company's main air hub is at Louisville International Airport.

"It is a purely voluntary thing. But the intent is to reduce head count," Black said. "We do not intend to replace the people who accept this offer."

The company is in "a great financial picture," he said, but is trying to better integrate its supply-chain and package-delivery businesses. Since UPS went public in 1989, it has acquired more than 30 companies "that we have knitted together to form Supply Chain Solutions," he said.

Black said the offers would be "very individualized," with severance based on the employee's age, years of service and pay.

Employees will have until Jan. 29 to decide. "For those who say yes, they will be leaving the company no later than Feb. 28," he said.

The company will discuss any significant financial impact from the action after its Jan. 30 earnings report, he said.

Reporter Bill Wolfe can be reached at (502) 582-4248.