Mood Is Somber at Irvine Co. on Last Day for Laid-Off Employees

“I enjoyed working with you. You are a very valuable person who will be missed,” a businessman said with forced cheer Thursday afternoon as he bid farewell to one of his former Irvine Co. co-workers who won’t be returning to the Newport Beach development firm after the Fourth of July weekend.

The recipient of the condolences was a 36-year-old lawyer at the development firm who learned Wednesday that his career with the Irvine Co. is being terminated. His is one of 240 positions that the company is eliminating as of July 7 in an unprecedented economy drive.

The Irvine Co. will be cutting campaign contributions by about 25%. (Story, Part II, Page 1.)

The lawyer, who asked not to be identified, said most employees realized that a staff cut at the Irvine Co. was coming. Nonetheless, he said he was surprised to learn that he would be one of the casualties. “I had been here five years, and I probably would have stayed. It was a comfortable job,” he said.

Like others in his predicament, the lawyer spent some hours at the Irvine Co. Thursday to clear out his desk and use the telephone to start “networking” with associates who might have heard of employment openings. He said that most of the people being laid off seemed to be “philosophical about it.” One reason, he said, is that the severance pay the company is offering--four to 30 weeks’ salary with extended medical insurance--will “give them enough of a breather to start over.”

Probably the busiest place at the Irvine Co. Thursday was the human resources department, where counselors were beginning to meet one-on-one with terminated employees to advise them about their severance benefits and help them prepare resumes and start job hunting. Such “exit interviews” will stretch at least through next week, company officials said.

“Frankly it is a very dramatic impact on this company,” human resources director Daniel G. Beals said of the layoff, which is the largest in the company’s history. Although work force contractions are common in manufacturing and small building firms, they have been relatively rare at the Irvine Co., Beals said, because of the company’s diversity of enterprises, which cover a gamut of industrial, residential, retail and office development. Usually when one activity declines, he said, another takes up the slack.

The current layoff, Beals said, ranges across every department in the company, affecting workers from receptionists and secretaries to managers and directors.

Even the human resources department had its cuts. Beals said that nine of the 28 employees under his supervision were given notice but that all have agreed to stay on an extra three weeks to assist in finding employment for other laid-off employees.

Because of the current healthy condition of the real estate industry, Beals said he doesn’t anticipate that the laid-off Irvine Co. employees will have difficulty relocating. Since this week’s publicity about the layoffs, he said, the company already has begun receiving inquiries from executive search firms, some from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas.

Also, Irvine Co. personnel officers Thursday said they had received calls from about 20 other Orange County companies, mostly in real estate, who were looking for recruits in a variety of areas including secretarial, accounting, construction, project management and finance. The personnel officers said they also would be searching for additional job openings to refer to laid-off Irvine Co. employees. Moreover, Beals said, the personnel staff will assist job hunters in compiling and typing resumes.

Some of the workers laid off at the Irvine Co. didn’t have to look very far for a new job. Chandler Campbell, a 69-year-old retired colonel who serves as security guard at one of the Irvine Co.’s office towers, just put on a different jacket with a different patch. “Until 3 p.m. I worked for the Irvine Co. and tahen I started working for Universal Protection Service,” he said.

As one cost-saving measure, the Irvine Co. has eliminated its own security service and is contracting with an outside company to do the job. Campbell said that most of the Irvine Co.’s security guards were offered positions with the contracting firm, although in some cases the pay being offered was lower. Irvine Co. parking attendants said their function will also be performed in the future by an outside company which has not yet been selected.

Irvine Co. employees who still had their jobs Thursday expressed a mixture of relief for themselves and sadness for their less fortunate colleagues. Some said they expected that the job cuts will greatly increase their workloads.

Lonnie Currier was manager of employee relations the day before the announced layoff. The day after she was also manager of administrative services. “In consolidation I have this much to do,” she said, circling the air above her head with her arms. She said she felt grateful that the woman who lost her job in the administrative merger has promised to spend some time next week orienting Currier to her additional duties.

Currier said she believes everyone in the company will feel the strain of having to increase production to make up for the layoffs. “I am sure everyone will be stretched to the limit and working a lot of overtime hours,” she predicted.

Sabrina Greco, a document coordinator in the Irvine Co.’s land management subsidiary “made it through the cuts” but was far from lighthearted as she went home for the holiday. “It is depressing. Just horrible,” Greco described the day just ended. “The worst part of it is losing your friends.”