Sprint to shut call center
Another major call center in Hawaii is being shut down, with telecommunications company Sprint Hawaii saying it will close its 30-employee hospitality operator center in Honolulu in January so the company can consolidate operations in Winona, Minn.
Sprint's Honolulu and Winona call centers provide operator assistance to pay phones and the bulk of hotels across the mainland and in Hawaii, where tourism is the state's No. 1 industry. The employees are trained to deal with each hotel on a specialized level, and know multiple languages.
"The two call centers were redundant," said Nonie Toledo, vice president and general manager for Sprint Hawaii. Minnesota was picked to remain open, she said, because "the amount of operators in that center were greater; cost of doing business is lower there."
Sprint, a unit of the fourth-largest U.S. cellular phone company Sprint Corp., is working with the employees to see if they are qualified for open positions here. Those who don't find jobs will be laid off. The closure will leave Sprint Hawaii with about 190 employees, Toledo said. That's down from 400 in 1996.
The call center opened in the early 1980s. Sprint acquired it when it bought Long Distance/USA in 1989.
The announcement, filed Monday with the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, follows last week's revelation that Honolulu-founded Cheap Tickets Inc. is shutting its Hawaii call center by next month, laying off 200 employees.
Two years ago, Sprint closed its downtown Bishop Street customer-care call center, laying off 65 people. More recently, Sprint Hawaii cut 20 billing jobs in a national reorganization.
Still, the call center business is not disappearing. AT&T Hawaii began hiring for its call center at Restaurant Row in September.
