ADT consolidates Neb. central, eliminates 380 jobs

BOCA RATON, Fla.--ADT Security Services recently announced it is closing its Papillion, Neb., central station, eliminating 380 jobs as it integrates its electronic customer monitoring and account retention systems with similar services around the country. ADT spokeswoman Ann Lindstrom said that this was not so much an example of a facility closing due to economic pressure as it was one aspect of an ongoing move on ADT's part to consolidate. "We're not calling this a layoff, because, frankly, it isn't," Lindstrom said. "I know that there are individuals who are impacted, but it was truthfully a consolidation. This has been part of a long term consolidation of the customer monitoring function," Lindstrom said. "You know, back in the olden days, there was a central station in every given city. And ADT has been consolidating them into larger centers for a number of years. And given the technological advances that we have made, even in the most recent year, we found that we were in a position to consolidate the Omaha center." ADT has been in the Omaha area since 1892. Lindstrom said that ADT has a national network of fully integrated and interconnected customer monitoring centers, so alarm signals can be seamlessly and automatically moved from center to center. ADT has centrals in Jacksonville, Fla.; Aurora, Colo.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Rochester, N.Y. The customer monitoring activities handled by the center in Papillion will be re-directed to ADT's other centrals. Lindstrom said the consolidation, due to be completed in March, will not affect ADT's redundancy and will be invisible to ADT customers. "The way our customer monitoring centers are set up, we are able to redirect calls in the event of, say, a hurricane in Jacksonville--we've done that many times--or in the case of Aurora, Colorado, where we had, one year, four feet of snow and actually had to close the center down," Lindstrom said. "But we were able to redirect all of those calls without any disruption of services." Lindstrom said she is uncertain if any of the 380 employees affected by the Papillion central station closing have applied for other positions with ADT. "We are offering them positions, if they're willing to move and if they're in a job that can transfer over to some other position," Lindstrom said. "Wherever not, many people are being offered severance benefit packages."