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Student loan collections specialist laying off 228 employees in Wyoming Co.
Student loan collections specialist laying off 228 employees in Wyoming Co.
Listen to this articleMore than 200 employees working in student loan debt collection services in Wyoming County will lose their jobs at the end of the year.
Pioneer Credit Recovery announced that 123 employees in Perry and 105 in Arcade will be impacted by the layoffs, which will begin Dec. 30, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed with the New York State Department of Labor.
That’s more than one third of the total full-time staff in the Perry and Arcade offices. Pioneer Credit Recovery is a subsidiary of Navient.
Pioneer’s guarantor collection operations specializes in collection of student loans that are backed by the federal government and owned by other entities. The collections work has been on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s recently announced Fresh Start Initiative will eliminate the need for collections services.
A total of 330 employees in New York will be impacted. The other 102 work out of Pioneer’s office in Horseheads (Chemung County). Including contract workers, the firm has more than 920 total employees.
“Some of the employees in this area will transition to new roles or new contracts, and others will have their positions end by the end of the year,” Paul Hartwick, a spokesperson for Pioneer, said in an email. “We made this announcement to give employees as much time as possible.”
Severance pay, extended health insurance coverage and job placement assistance will be provided.
“We greatly respect the contributions of our colleagues and will continue to support them through the transition,” Hartwick said. “These decisions are especially difficult because of the great results we consistently delivered over the years. Our Pioneer team members supporting guarantor clients have a long history of providing defaulted student loan borrowers with debt relief and have helped millions of borrowers return their loans to good standing.”
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