San Diego Nonprofit Works To Keep Laid-Off Qualcomm Employees Local

This is KPBS Midday Edition. I am Maureen Cavanaugh. Laos that QUALCOMM announced this summer are now underway. The San Diego-based technology giant is eliminated more than 1300 jobs here as part of a restructuring plan. QUALCOMM's revenue and net income have recently taken a hit. Between now and mid-November, hundreds of QUALCOMM employees will be transitioned out of their jobs, but the Regency economic agency is determined to see that most of these highly skilled workers find new work right here in San Diego. Joining me are Mark Cafferty, he is president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation. Mark, welcome. Thank you Maureen. Ray Major is also here. Ray it is good to see you. For coming in. Thank you very much. Ray, let's start out with some facts and figures..com is actually downsizing its worldwide operation, not just here in San Diego. How many people does this company employee worldwide? How many are losing their jobs? That is a true statement. QUALCOMM employs about 31,000 people worldwide and about 13,000 of those people are located here in San Diego. About 40% of QUALCOMM's employment base is in San Diego. About 4700 people are losing their jobs globally. 1300 of those are in San Diego. When it became clear that QUALCOMM was going to be laying off employees, was a San Diego hearing that even more than 1300 people might lose their jobs? When we heard about it earlier, people thought that the 4700 cuts may be coming here in San Diego. That would have represented a large percentage of the total workforce. In reality, what happened was that people were let go proportionally in San Diego than the rest of the world. We lost about 10% of the employment base here in San Diego. What is the expected impact of these layouts on the San Diego economy? The high-tech sector in San Diego employees about 95,000 people. There are a lot of jobs at a lot of different companies. There are 7000 different companies in San Diego that they can be picked up by. The way that QUALCOMM is doing it, for instance, they are allowing people 60 days to start looking for a new job and offering severance pay. This will minimize the overall impact. People remain in San Diego and start looking for new positions. That is where the economic development Corporation comes in. Why does QUALCOMM have to make these layouts? White as any to restructure? If you talk to the leadership of QUALCOMM, they will say that there are several times in a businesses cycle where they have to redirect their efforts or pivot as they might say. This is probably the third or fourth time QUALCOMM has had to do this. Many people may not realize that they have been a pretty heavy growth mode over the past few years, so even as they let go more than 1300 employees here, that will still make them bigger than they were in San Diego in 2012, which was not very long ago. In a lot of ways, it is adjusting to a very competitive environment. I would argue that QUALCOMM's most competitive sector in the world. They have to think about the future by making hard decisions today. Just to be clear, they are into mobile technology as their core function. Correct. That is their core function. They're also becoming a diverse innovation leader in a lot of spaces. They're thinking through what that means for them in the future. QUALCOMM has set up a career transition Center for those employees who will be laid off. Mark, what are some of the resources included? First and foremost, what I think QUALCOMM has done, and we've seen this with a few companies in San Diego, is put a lot of thought into these individuals transitions. When you're leaving QUALCOMM, it is clear that in the global war for talent, QUALCOMM is right at the forefront. As individuals leave QUALCOMM, they are very well educated and very well trained. Not surprisingly, a lot of companies in San Diego with love to get connected to QUALCOMM talent. The first thing that we want to do with them is find out of some of the biggest named companies are growing in San Diego and looking for people could be right there to engage with those employees. QUALCOMM is giving us an opportunity to do that. We also take note of the fact that many QUALCOMM employees may want to start their own business. We want to make sure an equal number of resources are there who can help with that process as well. Tell me a little bit more about that. I thought that that was quite an interesting part of this transition. The idea is that many of these people who have been working at QUALCOMM for quite some time may have ideas about starting their own companies. You want to help facilitate them. Absolutely. I think that Ray would tell you that the biggest job growth in San Diego is going to come from small employers. As I said before, these are talented individuals, and we have seen in San Diego folks leave QUALCOMM and start some of the biggest companies that we have here. We think that there is going to be -- most of these people will want to stay in San Diego. Our hope is to keep them here. We know that while some of them may want to go to another employer, and QUALCOMM has set them up to have the time to do that, others will say that this is the time for me to start a new business. Ray, is that one of the reasons that high-tech is one of the fundamental parts of the San Diego economy? Is it because of the cost of this kind of growth because one company can lead to the creation of another company? It is. We have seen that in biotech as well. There is a dearth of software engineers in San Diego. Is very difficult to hire them. As a former CEO the software company in San Diego, I can tell you that QUALCOMM engineers who are being let go will be very highly sought-after commodities. People want to hire them. That cross pollination occurs is going to make all of these smaller companies stronger within San Diego. How important our economy is it to keep these workers in this area? I think it is important for us to keep the workers here if we can. Like I said, the fact that they have a very high level of education and a very well sought off in their industry will help these other companies. I think it is important for us to try to keep them here and working with organization like marks. That is one of your prime goals is an it? No doubt about it. There is no surprise that companies as diverse as cubic and I boss which is a cyber security company growing in San Diego, have all stepped forward to make sure that we make every effort to try to give them options in San Diego. I think we have some remarkable people who have started incubators and accelerators here in San Diego closely connected to call -- QUALCOMM. With all of this enthusiasm, and all of this help being extended to laid off QUALCOMM workers, do they face challenges in locating Newark? Absolutely. Right now, we have a growing economy which is great. There is a perception in San Diego that if you are leaving a place like QUALCOMM that there may not be a lot of other big companies to go to or a lot of similar companies to go to. We think that the broader technology talent that will be leaving QUALCOMM will be very marketable to several print corners of our community. We have tried to reach out to all of them. Ray and I were just talking about this before we came in. There is an awful lot of regions that are growing great tech sectors right now who see places like San Diego as good places to try to recruit talent away from. We want to keep our eyes on that and do all we can to keep them here. What is the morale like among laid off QUALCOMM workers? I can't say that I've talked to them directly. I have worked on hundreds of layoffs, believe it or not, in San Diego over the past 15 years. I would say that I don't know that we've ever come across a company that has put as much thought into trying to make sure that this transition point is as doable for people as possible. They have offered severance packages, and given them great warning. They set up a career Center. It is never an easy time copied and never a good time, they made it as strong for people to make this transition. How successful has San Diego been in absorbing a lot of laid-off workers in the past? What is our track record like X It is up and down. If you look at San Diego historically, there have been moments that as a community I would argue that entities have played critical roles in key moments of helping people get training to move from one sector to another. There been other times we've seen talent leave this region, and because of that we really suffered. It is an incredible collaboration that is pulled together around QUALCOMM and other companies to try to make sure that we take talent very seriously because it is the strongest element of our economic development proposition here and San Diego. I want to go back one thing that you said Ray, and that is that one of the things in favor of the QUALCOMM employees getting new jobs in this region is that we actually have jobs that are going unfilled because his Mrs. Daft businesses cannot find the skilled workers to fill them. There are hundreds of business hiring thousands of people each year in San Diego. If you look at the QUALCOMM layouts, they represent about 1.4% of the total employment and high-tech. We should be able to absorb that. The key there is to offer help to these people. If you look at when they are being laid off and how their severance package last, they will be doing okay through the rest of this year as they start searching for jobs in putting out the Steelers. I would expect most of them to be gainfully employed by the beginning of next year. That would be good news for them, I am sure. Mark, you made a point that there are a number of layoffs in various industries in San Diego. Are we expecting anymore big layoffs from high-tech industries? Not ones that we have seen. Right now, if you look at the life sciences industries in San Diego, and while there may be from time to time some adjustments being made, it is still an industry that is in growth of. If you look at QUALCOMM as their bidding, as we absorb these losses in San Diego, the company is still as large as it has ever been. Have reached their largest point in San Diego. I feel we will always see turnover in this community because it isn't high-tech hub and that is always going to happen. More diverse high-tech companies are, the more opportunity there are for folks to move and have strong economic impact in the region. I want to thank you both. I been speaking with Mark who is president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and economist Ray Major with the San Diego Association of Governments. In Cuba very much. Thank you very much.