K.C. awaits deal's fallout

By CHRISTOPHER CLARK

The Associated Press

Millions of dollars donated to the community. North America's largest office construction project, unfinished. Thousands of jobs from the area's biggest private employer whose rippling financial effects can only be estimated.

The future of Sprint Corp. employees and their big-bucks impact on the Kansas City area remained an unanswered question Tuesday as Sprint and MCI WorldCom Inc. agreed to a $115 billion merger, history's largest corporate marriage.

As leaders of both companies announced the deal in New York, Sprint employees along with Kansas City-area economic and civic leaders kept an anxious watch over the developments and pondered the fallout.

Despite assurances that Sprint wouldn't abandon its giant "city within a city" headquarters in suburban Overland Park --- and optimism that the newly formed WorldCom actually could gain employees over the long term --- executives of neither company offered ironclad protection against job loss.

MCI WorldCom president and chief executive Bernard J. Ebbers tried to reassure workers unnerved by the news, saying the booming telecommunication industry is starved for skilled high-tech employees.

"The challenge is to get employees, not terminate them," he said.

Without employee cuts, WorldCom's global work force would top 140,000. Sprint holds about 65,000 of those jobs --- and 15,000 of those are in its Kansas City home base, making it the area's largest private employer.

Michael B. Fuller, president of Sprint's Local Telecommunications Division, acknowledged that workers may be on edge but said Sprint expects to finish its new headquarters --- a sign that the company doesn't anticipate large layoffs.

"We expect a substantially similar employee population to what we have here," he said.

How much does Sprint mean to the local economy?

Before beginning work on its 18-building, $920 million corporate campus (the development has its own ZIP code), Sprint operated from a web of more than 40 office buildings across the metropolis --- at one point accounting for more than 10 percent of the area's leased office space.

According to CERI, an economic research firm, in Johnson County alone, every Sprint job affects the equivalent of 2.27 others --- meaning that every Sprint position lost or gained is 2.27 jobs lost or gained at other businesses that feed Sprint through parts and other ancillary services.

Also, each dollar paid to a Sprint employee living in Johnson County means $1.15 to the county's economy, CERI said. It is a financial and physical presence that WorldCom is unlikely to ditch to save money, local experts said.

"You don't take over another company to destroy those assets," said CERI president Dennis McKee. "It's inconceivable they'd walk away from that."

Sprint is a huge civic giver, too.

The company last year donated $2.75 million, through employee and corporate gifts, to Kansas City-area United Way agencies --- more than 7 percent of the United Way's overall area total. The donation was second only to greeting card giant Hallmark.

Sprint leaders in Overland Park insisted the company would maintain its philanthropy.

"We're watching it with extreme interest and recognizing there could be an impact," said Ron Howard, spokesman for the Heart of America United Way in Kansas City. "We anticipate they would still have a large work force in Kansas City and that their employees would still be concerned about the welfare of the community and still be interested in helping that community through United Way."

Fallout

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.