158 More Austin Workers Cut Amid Coronavirus

AUSTIN, TX — Another 158 workers in Austin have lost their jobs as a result of the corrosive economic effects of the coronavirus, state documents show.

Officials at the Hilton Austin hotel and Exela Enterprise Solutions Inc., a business process automation firm, reported to employment regulators of the layoffs of 77 and 81 workers, respectively. The filings made last week were in keeping with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) of 1988, a U.S. labor law designed to protect employees, their families and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees.

After a formal request for information, Patch secured related correspondence to the Texas Workers Commission for details on each layoff notice.

The Hilton Austin hotel at 500 E. 4th St., was forced to lay off 77 of its workers as the hospitality industry has been among the hardest hit amid the global pandemic.

"We are taking these actions because of COVID-19 related business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time notice would have been required," Joe Bolash, the hotel's general manager, wrote to regulators. "We did not and could not have foreseen how broadly and deeply the COVID-19 epidemic would spread and affect our business, nor did we foresee that 'lockdown' orders, initially issued for short durations in certain specific cities, would spread throughout the country and be constantly and continually extended and/or changed, thus not merely interrupting commerce and travel for a short period, but now disrupting commerce and travel for the foreseeable future."

For its part, Exela Enterprises Solutions wrote the Texas Workers Commission about its plans to cut 81 positions at its facility located on 6301-8 Stassney Lane. But according to the company's correspondence, the layoffs were not fueled by the coronavirus.

Instead, Human Resources Director Judy Pace wrote regulators that the permanent layoffs were driven by a "...consolidation and relocation within the company of the duties and responsibilities of the Operations Department."

Company officials told regulators that the layoffs would begin on or around Nov. 1.