Former Touch America workers moving on or moving away

Just two years after moving to Butte, Jonathon Strong spent a gray afternoon this past week piling his family’s belongings back into a U-Haul truck.

By LESLIE McCARTNEY
Montana Standard

While three of his four children ran around a pile of boxes, Jonathon’s wife, Cathy, tried to organize the move from their 6,000-square foot Butte home to an unknown farmhouse more than 2,000 miles away.

"She doesn’t want to leave," Strong said.

But the Strongs don’t have a choice.

"It’s a new start," Cathy said with a sigh. "We’re going where we don’t know anybody."

Once a well-paid computer analyst with the now-bankrupt Touch America, Jonathon Strong has taken a pay cut and a cross-county move to survive a layoff from a company that once had so much promise, one that lured him from Nortel Networks in South Carolina.

At first, Strong was pleased with the fledgling Touch America and was among many employees working long hours for the company to succeed. "It seemed like they were doing everything they could to survive," Strong said.

Even with the first rumors of serious financial troubles, Strong continued to believe in Touch America. "My wife kept saying, ‘Is there anything we need to worry about?’ And I’d say, No," he recalled.

But, as the months passed and the bad financial news never ceased, Strong’s faith wilted. He worried about the company’s poor decisions and its almost total lack of experience in the telecom business. And he was angered when, even while Touch America’s stock was freefalling, the company’s five top executives shared a payout worth more than $5 million.

"They were not listening to their own employees’ advice," Strong said. "I wouldn’t call it a comedy of errors because it wasn’t funny."

In June, while on vacation, Strong was called and told he didn’t need to come back.

"We had some plans," Strong said, gesturing to his home with its five acres. "But all that changed in a matter of days."

With Touch America their sole income, and with four kids aged 3 to 14, the Strongs kicked quickly into survival mode. Their savings account quickly dried up and keeping health care benefits was laughable.

Temporary insurance was $475 a month, while their unemployment pay was $1,000 a month, Cathy Strong said.

The Strongs fretted for months until Jonathon was able to land a job in West Virginia, working as a systems engineer for the Department of Homeland Security. And while grateful for the job – and the help of the Butte Job Service and a displaced workers’ grant – the job still pays less than what Strong made at Touch America and there is the problem of what do with their unsold home here.

"I’ll probably have to go to work," Cathy said, to pay both the mortgage in Butte and the expenses of the new home in West Virginia.

Cathy, although usually optimistic, finds it harder to be that way as the grisly details of Touch America’s mistakes are played out in bankruptcy court.

"But it’s not our call and we’ll move on," she said.

What makes Jonathon angriest is not the decision-making, nor the seeming obliviousness of management. What angers him most is the way he and his fellow workers were unceremoniously dumped.

"It seemed so impersonal from a corporate perspective," Strong said. "Of all the companies I worked for, the layoff was probably the most impersonal," he said of a now infamous mass e-mail that delivered the news.

Strong is joined in that chorus by fellow ex-workers, Paul Babb and Colleen Rabson.

"They handled it real poorly, I think they owned employees more than that," Rabson said.

"They handled it with an impersonal e-mail and kicked you out the door with nobody to tell you your options," Babb, a seven-year employee said. He added that Touch America tried to shift blame to a consulting company called Nightingale and Associates, which at one time was helping to run the company.

"They come out and said Nightingale advised them to do that but where’s the backbone? I see these people on the streets and they continue not to do the right thing, that’s what makes me most angry," Babb added.

Babb is one of the luckier former Touch America employees because he managed to find a job with InTouch Solutions in Butte about two weeks after being laid off.

Nevertheless, the layoff, which Babb anticipated, hit him hard.

"It’s like having a death in your family, you can’t believe that it has happened," he said. Babb’s extensive support system of friends and family – and even his children’s school, Butte Central – helped make up for the fact that no co-workers except one man ever called him to see how he was.

It’s also hard not to compare Touch America’s dismal employee relations with the old Montana Power Co., a place widely known as a good place to work and a solid company that offered an American ideal, a lifetime job.

"I grew up in Butte and the attitude was that if anybody got a job with Montana Power, they were set for life," Rabson said.

At one time there were picnics, bowling tournaments and Christmas parties. "Everybody was really family-oriented, everybody knew everybody and there was a comraderie," Babb said. "In the last two years everything was cut…..the higher ups were not making them (employees) feel a part of anything."

However, the layoff did bring a new appreciation of what makes Butte Butte. "When you are down, there are a lot of people that try and help you," Babb said. "You don’t see that in a lot of places."

He does worry about his hometown with the failure of Touch America. At one time, nearly 200 people were employed at its headquarters with most salaries well above the state’s average. People on average, made more than $40,000 a year, with some reaching up into the six-figure salaries.

"You need two-three-four positions to replace one job in Touch America," Babb said.

Even now, nearly four months after the layoffs, Babb finds it hard to pass by Touch America’s home, the Hennessy building.

"It was something, a great place to work up until two years ago," he said.

Fellow ex-worker Rabson said finding a job in Butte is challenging.

"The jobs are real limited," she said. "And it’s frustrating in the fact that when you apply for a job you know there are 30 to 40 people, there’s a lot of competition."

Rabson, an accountant, has been to seven interviews and sent out about two dozen resumes.

The Rabson family has made some adjustments in spending and pushed off major purchases, but have done well. "I personally was pretty prepared for it, I saw the writing on the wall," Colleen said.

Rabson would entertain the thought of moving to a larger community if the job was right. "It’s tough to move the kids but if it’s a matter of survival you do it," she said.

Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

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