TIAA-CREF streamlining cuts 500 jobs

Denver Post ^ | 09-23-03

[Brian S]

By Aldo Svaldi Denver Post Business Writer

Retirement plan manager TIAA-CREF laid off more than 500 workers Monday, 70 in Denver, in a streamlining move.

"We were looking to basically restructure the organization to better serve customers," said Stephanie Cohenglass, a spokeswoman for the New York-based money management firm.

TIAA-CREF employs 6,000 people, including 1,200 in Denver after the cuts. Overall, the firm dismissed 8 percent of its workforce.

In Denver, the cuts focused on information technology workers, Cohenglass said. TIAA-CREF maintained 27 different computer servers in multiple languages, an amount the company determined was excessive, she said.

After they were notified, dismissed workers were escorted from their offices. Precautions were taken to prevent any damage to the firm's data and customer records, Cohenglass said.

Affected workers will be given severance packages and help finding new work, the company said.

"Stretching this process out over a period of days or weeks would have only exacerbated what has been a high level of anxiety within the company in recent weeks," chief executive Herb Allison wrote employees in an e-mail.

TIAA-CREF, which stands for the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund, provides retirement plans for colleges and universities, along with a line of variable annuities available to the public. It manages about $286 billion, making it nearly twice as large as Janus Capital Group.

TIAA-CREF's Denver workers are spread across Republic Plaza and the Amoco Building downtown. No major changes are planned in the firm's real estate needs.

TIAA-CREF established its Denver regional office in 1988 and uses it to serve about 480 institutions and their employees in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

The TIAA-CREF layoffs are the latest gash suffered by the city's financial services sector.

On Thursday, American Century, a Kansas City, Mo., mutual fund group, said it would move 145 jobs out of Denver and eventually end its presence here.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

"...workers were escorted from their offices."
How nice.

[billorites]

They have a reputation of being a well managed and cost-efficient financial services company.

[Cicero]

Not pleasant for those concerned, most of whom no doubt are honest employees. But one disgruntled employee with access to computer servers could bring down the whole system.

TIAA/CREF does an excellent job. I'd say the mistake was to build up such a lavish IT staff in the first place. Now they're correcting their mistake. They certainly don't need web pages in seven languages.

[lelio]

After they were notified, dismissed workers were escorted from their offices. Precautions were taken to prevent any damage to the firm's data and customer records, Cohenglass said.

With 27 different types of systems and millions of lines of code are you sure about that?

[tom h]

"They certainly don't need web pages in seven languages."

Uhhh ... perhaps "teachers union" will make the reason for this more clear.

With all those liberals from Mexico, Vietnam, Korea, China, Phillipines, etc., teaching our children, it would have only been "racist" to not provide these teachers with web pages in their native language. [/sarcarsm]