Ocwen lays off 51 workers in Waterloo
WATERLOO | Almost a year after laying off 238 workers in Waterloo, Ocwen Financial Crop. announced another round of cuts.
On Thursday, Atlanta-based Ocwen Financial confirmed it sent out layoff notices Wednesday to 51 workers at its Waterloo location, at 3451 Hammond Ave.
“Ocwen appreciates the hard work of all of its employees and recognizes this is a difficult time for those affected by yesterday’s efforts to right-size its operations in Waterloo,” company spokesman David Millar said Thursday. “Ocwen remains committed to its Waterloo operations.”
In December 2013, Ocwen, a mortgage servicer that purchased GMAC Mortgage in October 2012 from bankrupt mortgage company Residential Capital LLC, pared more than 800 workers nationwide, including 238 in Waterloo, shrinking the location from its largest to its second-largest.
Those layoffs were staggered; Wednesday’s were effective immediately, Millar said.
Ocwen still has about 750 local employees.
Ocwen did not file advanced notice of the layoff under the federal government’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, according to Iowa Workforce Development spokeswoman Kerry Koonce.
WARN is designed to protect workers, families and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide notification 60 days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s website.
“We’ll be following up with this,” Koonce said via email.
