Bitwise Industries files belated state layoff notice. How many people were affected in Fresno?

Embattled Bitwise Industries, the Fresno-based technology company that abruptly furloughed all of its employees on May 29 – and on Wednesday told workers that their jobs were terminated effective immediately – has filed required notices of mass layoffs in California and at least six other states where the company had employees.

The California Employment Development Department provided The Fresno Bee with the notice filed Wednesday under the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires employers to provide to workers, state employment officials and city and county leaders at least 60 days advance notice of any mass layoffs or closures.

Bitwise Industries interim President Ollen Douglass sent the 17-page notice to the EDD by email on the same day that the layoffs took effect. Altogether, the notice details 554 affected workers in California, including almost 370 in Fresno County.

Fresno-based Bitwise Industries was founded in 2013 as a hub to provide technology training classes in website development and software coding, as well as support for budding small-business technology entrepreneurs. Since that time, it expanded its interests into real estate development, taking a hand in rehabilitating aging buildings in downtown Fresno and leasing space to other businesses.

In recent years, the company embarked on an aggressive effort to develop sites or acquire other technology enterprises in Bakersfield, Merced and Oakland, as well as what Bitwise described as often-overlooked “underdog” cities including Greeley, Colorado; South Chicago, Illinois; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Buffalo, New York; Toledo, Ohio; and El Paso, Texas.

Bitwise WARN notices in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Illinois, Washington

Employment departments in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Illinois, Texas and Washington reported that Douglass sent notices to their state agencies on Wednesday.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services indicates that it received the Bitwise notice at 4:03 p.m. Eastern time, several hours after Douglass sent the termination emails to employees. The Ohio notice says it applies to 18 people at the Bitwise location in Toledo.

In Colorado, the notice received by the state Department of Labor and Employment doesn’t specify a timestamp, but reflects that it was received on Wednesday. That notice informed the state that 13 Colorado people were affected by the company’s mass layoffs in 10 counties, that includes Greeley, one of the “underserved” cities across the U.S. to which Bitwise had expanded.

Thirteen Texas residents are affected by the terminations, according to the notice provided to the Texas Workforce Commission.

Aside from details about the numbers of employees and positions and the work locations, the language of the notices is virtually identical.

New York’s Department of Labor provided a summary of the WARN notice it received Wednesday indicating that 10 employees were affected in that state.

A representative of the Illinois Department of Commerce told The Fresno Bee that its notification Wednesday from Bitwise included five layoffs at the company’s Chicago location.

And while Bitwise hadn’t reported that it had offices in Washington, that state’s Employment Security Department database shows that the company provided a WARN notice on Wednesday for layoffs of four employees.

In the California, Ohio, Colorado and Texas notices, Douglass wrote that a total of 625 workers were being terminated across its national footprint: Fresno, Bakersfield, Oakland and Merced in California; Greeley, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.

That national number is considerably smaller than the number of employees that then-co-CEOs Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr. reported to The Fresno Bee in a telephone interview when they announced the furloughs late on May 29, the end of the three-day Memorial Day holiday weekend. At that time, Soberal said the company had a total of about 900 employees across the country, the largest concentration of whom were in the Fresno area.

Both Soberal and Olguin Jr., Bitwise’s co-founders, were terminated from their jobs as co-CEOs on June 2.

In California, the June 14 notice advised of layoffs even in counties where Bitwise did not have physical offices – potentially reflecting a reliance on a remote workforce for many positions. In addition to the 366 terminated workers in Fresno County, other layoffs detailed in the California WARN notice were:

• Alameda County: 34 employees

• Kern/Inyo/Mono counties: 32 employees

• Madera County: 28 employees

• Tulare County: 14 employees

• Merced County: 12 employees

• Kings County: 10 employees

• San Diego County: 10 employees

• Santa Clara/San Mateo counties: eight employees

• Orange County: seven employees

• Contra Costa County: seven employees

• Los Angeles County: five employees

• Stanislaus County: five employees

• San Joaquin County: four employees

• Sacramento County: four employees

• Solano County: two employees

• Placer/Alpine/El Dorado counties: two employees

• Monterey County: two employees

• Mother Lode Consortium (mountain counties): one employee

• San Luis Obispo County: one employee

Among the Fresno County workers, 85 employees – nearly one-quarter of the workforce – held “manager,” “director,” “vice president” or “chief” job titles, including 16 vice presidents or senior vice presidents. Across California, the WARN notice details more than 30 vice presidents.

Guide for furloughed Bitwise workers: Where to get help, learn your rights and more

Fresno job fair Friday for Bitwise employees

The city of Fresno and the Fresno County Workforce Investment Board heldd a job fair for out-of-work Bitwise employees on Friday at Fresno City Hall.

Mayor Jerry Dyer said that at least 52 local companies with job openings would participate in the fair and that the city itself expected to fill some of its own vacancies with affected Bitwise employees with appropriate qualifications.

Blake Konczal, executive director of the Fresno Workforce board, said his organization has held several orientations for furloughed – and now terminated – Bitwise employees to walk them through the agency’s resources.

Dyer said Wednesday that even though Bitwise leadership described the job action on May 29 as a “furlough,” the city’s position is that it was in effect a layoff and still should have triggered a WARN notification – a notification that didn’t come until more than two weeks later when the company told employees their jobs were terminated.

“Had we been given the proper 60-day notice, we would have immediately put forth the effort to organize a job fair, probably within two to four weeks,” the mayor said. “And I’m very confident that those 400 employees at Bitwise would be employed (at new jobs) by this time.”