General Electric said Thursday some layoffs are likely in Georgia amid a reorganization that broke its enormous Atlanta-based energy division into three separate companies, but a spokesman added it’s too early to know how many.
The company said it’s trying to determine the fallout from the July decision to break up GE Energy, which has about 2,000 employees mostly in Cobb County, into a trio of standalone companies that report directly to the chief executive.
Spokesman Sean Gannon said there’s likely to be a “small number of global layoffs,” including some job cuts here.
“The question is what’s the mix” of jobs being shuffled amid the reorganization, said Gannon. “Some people might head to Atlanta, some people might leave. It’s a bit of musical chairs until the dust settles.”
He added: “GE’s businesses in Atlanta are very strong and there could be headquarters staff that join the existing businesses there. There could also be headquarters staff that leave. It’s still being determined.”
GE has already announced the departure of GE Energy chief John Krenicki, who ran all three of the units from his base in Atlanta. GE has disclosed that Krenicki, 50, will receive $89,000 a month in severance until 2022.
The company hasn’t filed any layoff notices with the Georgia Department of Labor and state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said GE hasn’t notified him of any cuts in the pipeline.
Cobb County officials are warily watching the situation, which comes on the heels of other sour economic news. Lockheed Martin confirmed last month it was cutting about 550 jobs from its Marietta plant as it slows its production of its primary aircraft line.
Brooks Mathis, the vice president of economic development for the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce, said he’s received assurances that GE’s move won’t lead to a large-scale layoff.
“We were concerned but everybody’s confident it’s more of a restructuring than terminating jobs,” he said. “It sounds to me like they’re aligning their business divisions in a different way. But it doesn’t look like a huge number of jobs will be impacted.”
GE Energy has a long history in Cobb County. It transferred 450 jobs from Schenectady, NY to the Wildwood office park off Powers Ferry Road in March 1998, citing tax breaks, Atlanta’s booming airport and a growing supply of engineering graduates. About two years later, the division’s headquarters arrived.
July’s reorganization, expected to trim the company’s costs by up to $300 million, puts further Georgia growth in question. Two GE Energy divisions – the Power and Water unit and the Oil and Gas unit – are headquartered elsewhere. Atlanta will remain the home of the Energy Management division, the smallest of the three with $7 billion in revenue.
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