US WEST Inc. plans to lay off 450 employees in its technologies division by mid-March as part of its ongoing restructuring.
The workers, who are spread across the company's nine Western states, will be notified by mid-February, said Bill Ewer, a division spokesman.The layoffs are part of a re-engineering program announced by US WEST in September 1993. The telecommunications company plans to lay off 9,000 employees and consolidate 560 customer-service centers into 26 centers in 10 cities.
At year end, the company had 1.2 percent more employees than it did in 1993 because of the addition of workers from new properties. But its subsidiary, US WEST Communications, had 4.4 percent fewer employees, 47,493 in 1994 versus 49,668 in 1993.
Meanwhile US WEST posted a 54.9 percent increase in fourth-quarter net income, buoyed by the sale of stock in TeleWest Communications and the sale of some rural telephone exchanges.
For the quarter that ended Dec. 31, the telecommunications giant reported $409 million in net income, or 89 cents a share, on revenue of $2.84 billion.
The results reflect $105 million raised on an initial stock offering for partial interest in TeleWest Communications and $20 million raised through the sale of some rural telephone exchanges, the company said.
In the fourth quarter of 1993, the company had net income of $264 million, or 62 cents a share, on revenues of $2.67 billion.
For the year, US WEST had net income of $1.43 billion, or $3.14 per share, on revenues of $10.95 billion. That includes a one-time gain of $41 million from the sale of paging operations, $51 million from the sale of rural telephone exchanges and the TeleWest stock sale.
In 1993, the company reported a net lost of $2.8 billion, or $6.69 per share, on revenues of $10.29 billion.
US WEST said the 1993 results reflected a $610 million restructuring charge, a $3.1 billion one-time extraordinary charge for a technical accounting change, a $77 million charge for early extinguishment of debt and $54 million for income tax rate change.
The report came as US WEST Communications Inc. worked to turn around customer-service problems related to delays in new telephone service and repairs. As of Dec. 31, US WEST Communications reported 1,797 people had waited more than 30 days for new service, down from a high of 5,114 on Oct. 28.
"I'm encouraged that our concerted efforts to correct last summer's service-installation delays are paying off," said Richard McCormick, US WEST chairman and chief executive officer.
"We're continuing to streamline that critical part of our business so customers can get what they want, when they want it - with a signle phone call."