Almost 200 people who work for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in Lincoln will be losing their jobs in another round of layoffs, according to a Tuesday filing.
ITC Federal, a company that employs contract workers to administer immigration services, will lay off its remaining 192 employees at its Nebraska Service Center at 850 S St., according to a filing with the Nebraska Department of Labor. The last day of work for most employees will be Nov. 30, when the company’s contract with the federal government is set to end.
ITC Federal previously laid off about 140 workers in Lincoln in January after announcing it was eliminating positions last December.
The workers in Lincoln mostly handle applications and records, including green cards, employment verification, immigration status adjustments, travel documents and Violence Against Women Act forms.
Dawn Meyer, the president of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Local 808, a union that represents the workers, said at the time that more layoffs were expected.
Since then the union had been trying to work to secure benefits like severance pay, Meyer said.
“There has been absolutely no headway,” Meyer said. “And it does not help with the current administration’s bent towards being very anti-union or anti-labor. It does not make it any easier. So the hope has pretty much left.”
Meyer said Nov. 30 is when ITC Federal’s contract with the government was set to end. The layoffs are part of a plan to reduce contract work by the Citizenship and Immigration Service.
“This is exactly what we were expecting,” Meyer said. “However, what we had not been expecting was the way the company has been treating this whole situation.”
Meyer said the company has not been willing to give the workers severance or retention pay.
ITC Federal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meyer said these layoffs will mean the closure of ITC Federal’s operations in Lincoln. ITC Federal also operates out of another center in the Highlands.
There are federal workers who are not contractors at the Nebraska Service Center and another center in the Highlands who will continue to work, Meyer said. Those workers haven’t been affected yet by a government shutdown, Meyer said.
The Lincoln location is not the only place where ITC Federal is laying off employees. In Irving, a city within the Dallas-Fort Worth metro in Texas, the company is laying off 169 workers. Previous ITC Federal layoffs also took place in California and Vermont.
“The job market is pretty slim in the area,” Meyer said. “There may be people who are going to have to leave Nebraska in order to find employment. I see that happening, that being a large possibility, especially for a lot of our younger folks and I find that to be really sad, because I think that’s a drain on our resources.”
Reach the writer at nfranklin@journalstar.com or 402-473-7391.
On Twitter @NealHFranklin
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