On Monday more than 600 employees were told that they were losing their jobs at SYKES in Boise, one of those employees Brian Lewis a father of two has a positive outlook moving forward.
"With the two kids I've got I want to show them that this part of life," said Lewis. "You get dealt cards, but sometimes it is not in your favor, but you can still move forward."
Lewis worked as a trainer in the call center at SYKES, the company offered him that promotion after Lewis worked for more than a decade in a number of different call centers.
SYKES will continue to operate in Boise and the company will offer a severance package of 60 days of pay and benefits to the employees who lost their job to help them transition.
"SYKES is responsive to the needs of the market and our clients, in a constantly changing business landscape," said Dana Wiederman the public relations director. "Due to recent changes in SYKES' business strategy, we are transitioning some of our services out of Boise on July 2."
The Communications Workers of America, a union for call-center employees also contacted us and believe the layoffs were due to moving call center jobs outside the United States.
The CWA said that 377 employees were laid off in Fayetteville, North Carolina from SYKES in June and back in 2016 400 workers lost their jobs when SYKES closed a call center in Eugene, Oregon.
The CWA also said the SYKES opened a call center in the Philippines in 2016 that created more than 2,000 new jobs in the country bringing the total workforce up to 15,000 employees.
Dana Wiederman told us via email the layoffs in Boise had nothing to do with moving jobs out of the country.
Brian Lewis said he plans on using the skills he learned at SYKES to start his own business, he appreciates the severance package and said that SYKES was a good place to work.
"I loved it," said Lewis. "They never asked me to do anything unethical, they never asked me to do anything I didn't want to do and they always took care of me and gave me opportunities that I wanted."
As a preventative measure, the Boise Police has had a presence at the SYKES headquarters since the layoffs happened on Monday.
