IAP Worldwide Services Inc. is not exactly an every day household name. As a matter of fact from that name the odds are good that most of you have absolutely no idea what the company does. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular corporate entity, lets begin with looking at how they describe themselves, “IAP is a leading provider of global-scale logistics, facilities management, and advanced professional and technical services. We are the “go to” company for governments, the military, commercial enterprises, and humanitarian organizations. When clients need an experienced, ethical partner to construct, operate, maintain and support large-scale or mission-critical initiatives anywhere in the world, and the job absolutely has to be done right, IAP is the company they choose because they know IAP will deliver every time.” Apparently the company believes that it can maintain the reputation without the help of a number of its employees. The company is getting ready to layoff workers in a big way.

The company is getting ready to cut back on about 99 workers at its facility in Bethesda. The city filed a layoff notification for a mass layoff action with the labor department in the state of Maryland last week. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” The terms of a mass layoff action generally mean that workers are given more notice then usual before they are laid off. This time, designed to give workers some time prepare for the loss or find new jobs, is designed to help the community at large to cope with the loss of income.

The company is letting go of workers because  a project in the are is being terminated. The loss of the project to another company has meant less need for workers in the state of Maryland. Workers for the Maryland State Department of Unemployment expect that a number of the workers will be picked back up by the company that is going to take over the project, though the workers were not given any indication of this and the state did not say why they believe that this will be the case. For the time being it is also unknown what kind of a severance package, if any, is going to be offered to the soon to be displaced workers.

The layoffs are going to go into effect as of the 18^th of June. The company did not provide a listing of the specific job titles or classes that will be getting the layoff notices in this round of layoffs.