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For nearly 100 years, D&E Communications has served the people of eastern and central Pennsylvania from its headquarters in Lancaster. But the company founded in 1911 by William F. Brossman, an area farmer and fertilizer distributor, never saw its centennial after being snapped up by Windstream Communications in a $333 million dollar deal.
What Brossman planted so long ago brings a bountiful crop of benefits for the top five former executives of D&E and the plowing under of 70 percent of D&E’s other employees, who are being shown the door between today and April 9th.
The Winners
Four high-ranking executives had provisions in their contracts with D&E that required the company to pay six-figure payments should the company be sold. Thomas E. Morell, Albert H. Kramer, Stuart L. Kirkwood and Leonard J. Beurer are offered the stacks of cash as an incentive to get them to stay with the company, even as hundreds of others don’t get that choice.
Former D&E CEO James W. Morozzi gets a consolation prize of $942,000, not including benefits.
The Losers
D&E employees will be let go with considerably less (perhaps a cardboard box to hold their possessions as they are escorted from D&E buildings.)
Windstream filed papers months ago with the state Department of Labor and Industry detailing the slashing of D&E’s workforce, declaring most redundant and no longer needed, providing some of the “cost savings” that fuel these telecommunications deals.
For Lancaster County, as many as 270 of D&E’s 340 workers will be abandoned. For eastern and central Pennsylvania as a whole, 500 jobs will be reduced to 200 or less in Ephrata and Birdsboro. What made D&E “local” to Lancaster County and this part of Pennsylvania will be no more. Local customer service and support call centers are also being eliminated — transferred to existing Windstream centers in Cornelia, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina. Customers who have paid their D&E bills in person at the company’s Birdsboro office will have to make other arrangements — they are weeding out that service as well.
Other stories of interest:
- Bankruptcy Watch! FairPoint ‘Swirling in the Bowl,’ Hurtles Towards Bankruptcy; Groups Opposing Deal Say “I Told You So”
- Windstream’s Acquisition of Iowa Telecom Continues Telephone Company Consolidation, Worries Employees
- Frontier Reveals Plans of Usage Cap Implementation to Employees; Leaves Customers In The Dark Until It’s A Done Deal
- Frontier Targeted for Takeover? Deal “Likely Within Six Months,” Says Industry Analyst
- Frontier Positioning Itself for a Buyout?
So which do you like better: more people employed or lower rates on DSL service? Because from what I can find D&E was a publicly traded company (far gone were the days of farmers and their telephone companies) with a bunch of rural LEC lines, some CLEC phone lines, 1/3 of the phone lines running DSL, and a few thousand video customers. Releases say that D&E’s fastest internet speed was 10 Mbps. Windstream’s is 12 Mbps, which costs $40 with a phone line, $45 without. Upload speeds may have been better on D&E but those are the facts I found; D&E hid their pricing behind a zipcode qualification wall so I can only guess about upload speeds and prices for their internet product, which I believe ran over DSL or coax depending on the area. I do know that 1.5 Mbps service was $40 per month, $10 more expensive than what Windstream is now charging for that service without a phone line (it’s $25 with one).
Is local bill payment a nice option to have? Sure, but Verizon hasn’t had anyone at their CO here for awhile, and I believe that most people are perfectly fine with mailing a bill or paying online. Does this put Windstream at a disadvantage versues a local provider, if one is around, or even a national provider with a local office in the area? Yes, but that’s their decision, for better or for worse.
As for the other employees, Windstream doesn’t outsource anything to India/Philippines/etc. any more last I checked. Sure, they may not be next door, but they do speak the same language, and are about as likely to know what they’re talking about as whoever was a CSR at D&E, which was no small outfit itself.
Is it sad to see jobs vanish into thin air? Yes. Is it unfair to give head management enormous golden parachuts as the company is sold out from under them? Absolutely. However Windstream apparently wanted D&E’s customers, and will likely give everyone a better deal on phone and internet service than they had before, though CAYV may fall by the wayside in favor of Windstream’s crappy Dish agreement :/
My point: downsizing doesn’t necessarily mean that customers get the shaft. Kerrville, Texas, now Windstream (formerly Valor, which owned Kerrville Telephone Company at that point), had local downsizings over the years, however last I checked the company was still providing reliable DSL service to the town at prices below what KTC used to charge ($50 for 1.5/512 DSL anyone?). Heck, Windstream and HCTC (telephone cooperative whose service area is a horseshoe around Kerrville…until now, with their new CLEC venture) are now competing on the business front, in addition to the competition between Windstream and Time Warner Cable. The area doesn’t have DOCSIS 3 yet, but HCTC has fiber to the business…
I guess what I’m saying is, it’s Windstream’s prerogative to run a tight ship. If someone wants to step in and compete with them, it would be an idea worth pursuing if people aren’t satisfied with the service they’re receiving. The real question is whether that’s in fact the case, regardless of how many positions are no longer held in D&E territory.
What would I like better? More executives jailed for economic treason. Executive compensation confiscated and redistributed to laid-off workers. Golden parachutes smashed with axe handles. Merry freaking Christmas.
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