Nearly 200 Austin High Tech Workers Face Layoffs

NORTH AUSTIN, TX — Nearly 200 area workers will be laid off in the coming days in the wake of job cuts by two high-tech companies, Oracle America and Novitex Enterprise Solutions.

Both companies disclosed the imminent layoffs to the Texas Workforce Commission as part of the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act requiring notice to large layoffs.

A subsidiary of Oracle Corp., Oracle America plans to eliminate 108 jobs, according to company officials. A company official explained in an accompanying letter to state officials that the layoffs are connection to job force reductions at the company's Riata Park Oracle site at Riata Park Court. The company has no plans to close the facility in connection to the job reductions, according to the WARN letter.

Company officials noted the cuts are permanent, with the positions expected to end Oct. 31. The Texas Workers Commission once listed the specific positions to be cut whenever a layoff occurred, but told Patch recently they no longer do that to protect employees' privacy—ending a longtime practice. As a result, the nature of the work performed by those being laid off was not specified.

Based in California, Oracle Corp. is the world's second-largest software company. Currently, the company is building a corporate campus at 27 acres overlooking Lady Bird Lake—a land purchase that spurred the eviction of more than 100 low income families who had long lived in affordable housing there.

At the time, Oracle officials didn't respond to numerous requests for comment from Patch asking whether they would help defray relocation costs for the families displaced after their land purchase. (See: Oracle Corp. Expansion Plans Prompted Mass Evictions, Dec. 23, 2015). The low-income families forced to scramble for alternative housing and schools for their children were displaced from their homes a few days before Christmas.

The other company alerting to layoffs, Novitex, attributed state officials to 86 job cuts at its client site Dell Inc. in Round Rock. The elimination of those positions is attributable to the "...sudden and unexpected loss of its contract with Dell Inc.," a company officials wrote in an accompanying letter to state officials.

Based in Stamford, Conn., Novitex is a document outsourcing company. Company officials said they would offer transfers to some of the affected workers, who have no union representation.

Analysts predicted such layoffs would occur in the wake of a mega-merger a year ago between Dell and EMC Corp. as redundancies are sussed out. (See: Round Rock-Based Dell Inc. Completes Merger With EMC Corp, Yielding World's Largest Privately Held Tech Firm, Sept. 7, 2016). Some industry analysts predict up to 3,000 job cuts could result at Dell following the gigantic, $63 billion merger.

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