ertz Corporation has announced plans to lay off an unspecified number of employees. The employee cutbacks will be mainly out of the IT department, as the company is struggling to introduce more efficient practices into this everyday actions. “What’s going on in Oklahoma City is over a year ago we announced some outsourcing arrangements with IBM for some of our IT work,” said company spokesman Richard Broome.

The job cuts are located at the company’s data center, in Oklahoma City, and there are no plans to release the number of job losses. Hertz employs roughly 2,500 people in the Oklahoma City area, which includes a reservation and customer service center .Those centers are not expected to be affected at this time. The cutbacks come as no surprise to the employees who are being severed; they were notified in groups over the last couple of months that their jobs will be eliminated. The reason for the cutbacks is mainly the company’s partnership with IBM allow IBM to provide much of their technical work. According to a Reuters report, this round of job cuts has no connection whatsoever with the cutbacks that were made in January of 2007. The loss of jobs in 01/07 was the result of the company laying off 150 employees in the IT and management division. Those layoffs were due to market conditions, and had no connection with the IBM negotiations. The Hertz spokesman said that, of the 2,500 jobs located in Oklahoma City, only a “…small percentage…” will be affected.

Hertz, one of the largest rental car companies in the world, has been suffering during the current financial crisis. Decreased travel for both family and corporate clients has led to a dramatic decrease in overall profits for the company, and cutbacks were inevitable. However, despite these cutbacks, the company remains generally optimistic about future prospects, and expects to weather the remainder of the financial downturn with minimal impact.

Learn more at: www.hertz.com