news-record.com

WINSTON-SALEM (MCT) — Having six weeks' heads-up didn't make losing their jobs any easier for more than 400 local Dell Inc. employees.

Those employees' last day was Wednesday as the company began winding down the work force at its desktop-assembly plant in Winston-Salem.

Dell officials declined to comment as to why the job cuts were about 200 fewer than it projected when it announced the plant closing on Oct. 7.

Altogether 905 Dell employees will be out of work when the plant shutdown is completed around Jan. 20 -- nearly four years and four months after the 750,000-square-foot plant opened with great fanfare and promise in October 2005.

The employees are entering a tough job market, with a Triad unemployment rate of 10.9 percent in September. The plant closing represents the third-largest job cut in Forsyth County in the past 22 years.

It is topped only by the 1,700 jobs cut by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in September 2004 and the 1,300 jobs eventually cut by Wachovia Corp. as part of being bought by First Union Corp. in September 2001.

Dell employees interviewed Wednesday by the Winston-Salem Journal declined to be identified, saying they did not want to risk losing their severance package.

One employee said she was worried about whether her family would have enough money to pay their bills or buy Christmas presents.

''We're hurting," she said. "I don't know if the unemployment benefits will last long enough for me to get more training or a new job."

David Frink, a spokesman for Dell, said that employees would receive two months of pay, an additional week of pay for every year they worked at the plant, two months of COBRA health-insurance coverage, a bonus for fiscal year 2010 goals that were met at the plant, and two months of outplacement services help.

On Oct. 14, three Dell employees filed a petition for benefits from the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance Act.

The act provides extended benefits to employees whose jobs were eliminated related to foreign competition or the shift in production/supply of services to other countries.

The U.S. Labor Department has a deadline of Monday for making a decision.

''We have met with the Dell employees and encouraged them to access our services via the Internet as opposed to visiting their local offices to register for work and file their claims," said Archie Hicks, the manager of the Winston-Salem office of the N.C. Employment Security Commission.

Although Dell was reluctant at times to provide work-force numbers at the plant, it did say that half of its employees lived outside Forsyth.

Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University, called the plant "a casualty both of the global recession and the ever-changing dynamics of the technology manufacturing field."

The plant's lifespan was projected to be at least 15 to 20 years when the deal was announced in 2004. But some analysts predicted that the plant wouldn't last that long for two reasons -- that the desktop market was nearing a saturation point and that laptop computers were expected to overtake desktops in popularity.

Both came to pass much sooner than expected.

Dell had to have 1,700 full-time or equivalent jobs, also counting suppliers, in the plant by September 2010 to fully qualify for local incentives. The plant topped out at just more than 1,100.

On Nov. 3, Dell repaid about $15.5 million in incentives to the city, about $7.9 million to Forsyth County, about $2.8 million to the Millennium Fund and about $308,000 to Forsyth County Development Corp.

Derwick Paige, the deputy city manager for Winston-Salem, said that there was no update regarding a task force to find a new tenant for the plant.