Time Warner Cable, the state's biggest cable TV company, will shut down its customer call center in Fayetteville and move the 80 jobs to Raleigh and Wilmington.
The employees in those jobs, who are paid about $30,00 a year, will be able to reapply for their positions in the new locations. Sixty call center jobs will be moved to Raleigh and and 20 dispatch jobs will go to Wilmington.
Time Warner will shut down the the 45-year-old Fayetteville center Oct. 29 to consolidate operations, leaving two call centers in Raleigh and Wilmington. Company spokeswoman Melissa Buscher said this is not a cost-cutting measure.
"These functions lend themselves to centralization for staffing reasons, training and supervision," Buscher said.
Time Warner notified the state Department of Commerce last week about the layoff that will also cut one position in Souther Pines and one in Lumberton.
Buscher said workers who lose their jobs, because they don't want to move or aren't rehired after reapplying, will be given severance packages. Workers who move to Raleigh or Wilmington will receive relocation packages that will cover the cost of their move.
Time Warner employs about 1,500 people in Raleigh, nearly 400 in Wilmington and 325 in Fayetteville. The company sells phone, Internet and cable TV service to more than 800,000 customers in the Triangle and eastern North Carolina.
John Murawski has been a full-time newspaper reporter since 1991, with stints at Legal Times and The Chronicle of Philanthropy (both in Washington, DC), The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Palm Beach Post (in South Florida) before arriving at the N&O in December 2004. At the N&O he covers energy (nuclear, coal, renewable, efficiency), utilities (electric, natural gas, telephone) and telecommunications. His beat includes such publicly traded companies as Progress Energy, Duke Energy, PSNC Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, PowerSecure International, Tekelec, Cisco Systems, AT&T, among others. You can reach him at 919-829-8932 or 
