Even as they ready a campaign with the American Red Cross to send holiday cards to troops overseas, employees at Pitney Bowes Inc. are once more nervously eyeing their own mailboxes for news on their jobs.
Pitney Bowes indicated it is targeting at least $150 million more in restructuring through 2012, with the company not immediately publicizing the specifics about the moves that began in earnest in the current quarter.
The mail equipment and services company is among the largest employers in Fairfield County with more than 3,000 workers at its Stamford headquarters and at a satellite technology facility in Shelton.
As part of previous restructuring initiatives, Pitney Bowes cut 160 jobs in the third quarter and now has eliminated more than 3,200 in the past two years. In response to a query on specific job cuts in the offing, spokeswoman Carol Wallace said Pitney Bowes has yet to “finalize the costs of timing of the transformation.”
“This is really about process enhancement, so really looking at common processes and platforms; increased use of shared services; better leverage of some of the architectural and tools in our development process; obviously looking at facilities footprints,” said Michael Monahan, chief financial officer of Pitney Bowes, in a conference call with investment analysts. “It”™s really an across-the-board view of our business and the opportunities to leverage what is in the different businesses into a common platform.”
Â
Pitney Bowes sells mail equipment and runs corporate mailrooms on an outsourced basis. Under CEO Murray Martin, the company has struggled to keep sales up the past few years as postal reform enacted in the United States has contributed to some customers delaying purchases, and as corporate mail volumes have dropped overall.
Â
In the third quarter, Pitney Bowes profits increased 5 percent to $103 million from a year earlier, despite revenue dropping 12 percent to under $1.4 billion.
“We haven”™t seen the volume return in (U.S.) mail across the board, as the financial sector in particular as well as retail continues to be under stress,” Martin said. “What we have seen towards the end of the quarter is a slight improvement in the rate of decline, so the decline has been softening somewhat ”¦ As we look forward to what the ”˜posts”™ are projecting, they”™re projecting substantially less decline (going forward).”
Even as the company and its workers hope for a rebound, for the third straight year Pitney Bowes is doing its own part to fill up “the posts,” in Martin”™s parlance. Earlier this month, Pitney Bowes announced it plans to pair up again with the American Red Cross in the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” program, through which U.S. citizens can send cards to military service members and veterans.
Last year, more than 1.4 million holiday cards were delivered under the program; this year, the organizations recruited singer Amy Grant to help publicize the event, with Grant slated to perform Nov. 11 at the American Red Cross”™ headquarters in Washington, D.C. Cards must sent with proper postage and received no later than Dec. 7, and participants are asked not to send monetary gifts or “care packages” containing goods; and are asked not to use glitter glue or include inserts in the cards.
Holiday cards should be sent to: Holiday Mail for Heroes, P.O. Box 5456, Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456.
