BrickStreet looks to cut 24 employees: Buyout offers sent to 60 employees

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Greg Burton, president and chief executive officer of BrickStreet Mutual Insurance Co., said the company is looking to trim its workforce by 24 jobs.

"We have another voluntary separation program like we did last year," Burton said. The company sent buyout offers to about 60 employees last Monday by e-mail.

"We limited the offer to certain job classifications," he said. "We're looking to cut back 24 positions."

The offer is not as rich as last November's, when BrickStreet bought out 50 employees. Those workers received either one year's salary or nine months of pay and six months of paid health-insurance coverage.

Employees who take this year's offer will receive either six or nine months of severance, depending on the date they were hired.

The employees who received the offer have until Nov. 16 to decide. Nov. 20 will be the last day of work for those who take the offer.

Burton said the company will decide what to do next after it sees how many workers take the offer.

"If we got two or three people, we would have to take a hard look at involuntary layoffs," he said. On the other hand, "if we got 20, we might make the additional cuts next year through attrition. We'll see how many take it, then make a decision."

The decision to trim again was made because BrickStreet "is continuing to look at our market share," Burton said. "We continue to have about 60 percent of the market. We knew as time went by, we would have to continue looking at staffing levels to make sure it was at appropriate levels to service the book of business that we have."

BrickStreet currently has about 390 employees. The company had 485 employees on Jan. 1, 2006, when it succeeded the state Workers' Compensation Commission as the sole provider of workers' compensation insurance in West Virginia. The market opened to competition on July 1, 2008.

Contact writer George Hohmann at business@dailymail.com or 304-348-4836.