A double dose of bad news is coming for the job seekers in the United States as not one but two companies have announced that they are going to let go of workers in order to save some cash.  This means more competition for jobs. Which as you can imagine is bad news that is  coming around right before the holidays get into full swing. Between the pair of companies this will mean the loss of roughly 110 jobs.

The two companies both filed notices with the state this week. The first contender is Pitney Bowes, a company that is currently best known as the makers of office supplies such as postage meters, will be closing its location in Chesapeake. The Chesapeake facility is a call center, and its closing will represent the loss of 64 jobs for the state.

The second of the companies to let go of staff is BASF. For those of you not familiar with the company BASF is a chemical company based in Germany. They are letting go of 50 workers from a plant that they own in Suffolk.

Matt Broder, a spokesperson for Pitney Bowes, told a reporter for HamptonRoads.com that the layoffs would being on the 22^nd of February, so at least while people are finding out near the holidays they will have a few months to plan for the job losses. He also had the following to say, “We have several call centers we operate around the country. This was one of the smaller ones. We have the opportunity to consolidate and become more efficient.”

These layoffs are not because Pitney Bowes is in any dire finical straights. The company is instead looking to make themselves more efficient. His exact words to the same reporter were, “We’re like a lot of companies. We’re constantly looking to see where we can improve our operations and become more efficient, because competitive pressures are pretty tough these days.”

BASF is a different story. While they are not looking to close their facility completely, they are going to shut down some of their operations in order to run a little leaner. One of the most noticeable cutbacks will be the loss of the production of polyacrylamide beads. Polyacrylamide beads are used to keep liquids and solids separated in water treatment plants and during the mining of oil.  The production of the polyacrylamide beads will be moved to a plant in Great Britain. The plant already makes polyacrylamide beads, so this is a consolidation.

In a news release Denise M. Joost, the head of oilfield and mining chemicals business in North America for BASF, had the following to say about the cutbacks,  “The shift of the bead production from Suffolk to Bradford is another step in our strategy to optimize our production assets globally so that we ensure competitive bead supply to our customers in North America, which will remain a key region for the growing oilfield and mining industries.”

Both of these looses will qualify as mass layoff actions as per the guidelines set by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.