Mobile phone company Orange is to close its call centre in Bradley Stoke with the loss of 300 jobs.
The news was broken yesterday (Wednesday) by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents staff at the site.
Andy Kerr, CWU Deputy General Secretary, said:
“Orange has briefed staff in Bristol today confirming that it will be closing the Keypoint centre [at St James Court, Great Park Road, Bradley Stoke]. Many of the staff will be moving to other sites but unfortunately Orange will not be retaining the call centre so up to 300 people will be made redundant.”
Staff are said to have been bracing themselves for job losses after Orange’s announcement of its intention to merge with T-Mobile, but the “blanket” redundancies came as a surprise.
Many of the employees are said to have been in tears after the announcement and managers decided to close the call centre for the remainder of the day.
The workers have now entered a 90 day consultation period. They will be offered a relocation package to move to Orange’s call centre operations in Plymouth or Darlington. Staff who do not wish to move will be given redundancy payments.
The CWU added:
“We are in close contact with Orange and hope to minimise the impact these job losses will have on workers by exploring redeployment or retraining to enable staff to take up other roles in Bristol and other options as fully as possible.”
