Frontier Communications plans to move 100 jobs to New London office
New London — Frontier Communications confirmed Thursday that the company will now be moving 100 people into a building it owns on State Street, twice as many as it initially expected.
About half of the downtown jobs will be transfers from New Haven - people who used to work in the city and will be returning by April 15 - while the other half will be new hires, the company said.
"These are good jobs," said William Henderson III, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 1298, in a phone interview. "It's not just good for New London; it's good for southeastern Connecticut."
AT&T, which sold its landline and U-verse businesses to Frontier last year for $2 billion, had virtually eliminated all its employees in the city in the past few years - closing its call center and cutting the last of its in-state operators while moving a few dozen New London workers to offices in New Haven. Workers forced to move were unhappy with the long commute, Henderson said.
Four years ago, AT&T had up to 400 people working in New London, according to Henderson, and the closure of its State Street office hurt the local business community that counted on downtown workers frequenting their restaurants, retail establishments and coffee shops.
"This gives a toehold for other businesses to follow in New London," Henderson said. "There are all kinds of positive spinoffs."
Henderson said Frontier is putting $1 million into renovations of its downtown office space. The company wouldn't confirm that number but agreed the improvements were substantial.
In addition to a brick building at 200 State St., the Stamford-based Frontier owns a multi-story space on Washington Street that serves as its New London central office. The nearly vacant building has been undergoing extensive renovations since before Frontier took it over, but the company so far has not announced what its future intentions for the space are.
Henderson said the local hires are part of a Frontier plan to take on 560 new employees across the state in the coming months. A substantial number, he added, will be veterans.
"We're doing a lot of hiring around the state," said Bridget Smith, Frontier spokeswoman. "We're going at this aggressively and just trying to make the customer experience better and to keep hiring great people in Connecticut."
Smith pointed to a job fair Frontier held in Groton last week and said there would be more planned around the state.
Constructions crews, sales and service technicians and U-verse support personnel are among the positions Frontier is looking to fill, she said.
"I don't know of anybody (else) in the state who has made a commitment to add 560 jobs," Henderson said.
Henderson said Frontier is trying to win back customers who had been frustrated by AT&T's lack of service and outsourcing.
"We were operating on a shoestring for a long time," he said. Now, he added, "It's all about the customer."
l.howard@theday.com
Twitter: @KingstonLeeHow
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