The company poised to merge with Qwest Communications announced plans this week for a structure of regional headquarters that will replace many of Qwest’s current state presidents and delegate their responsibilities to multiple executives.
The headquarters for the Midwest region, which includes Nebraska and Iowa, will be in Minneapolis, where Duane Ring, who now serves as president of CenturyLink’s Northeast region, will serve as president.
The timing for the change is sometime in the first six months of 2011, when the merger is expected to be finalized. The merged company will operate in 37 states.
A vice president and a general manager will share the responsibility of managing statewide financial and operational performance previously handled by state presidents, CenturyLink, based in Monroe, La., said in a press release.
Qwest’s president for Nebraska operations, Rex Fisher, announced last month that he would leave the company after the merger. CenturyLink’s plan to restructure management roles “weren’t opportunities I was interested in,” the 53-year-old executive said.
Other regional headquarters will be in Wake Forest, N.C.; Denver (the current nationwide headquarters for Qwest); Orlando, Fla.; Seattle; and Phoenix.
Of the six regional offices, five will be headed by current CenturyLink executives. The exception is in Seattle, where Brian Stading, vice president of network operations and engineering for Qwest, will be in charge.
A Qwest spokeswoman said the change in itself will have minimal impact on the workforce level in Omaha. While it still is unknown whether and how many of Qwest’s 1,250 Nebraska employees might lose their jobs because of duplication in the two companies, having Nebraska under a regional office in Minneapolis doesn’t mean much, she said.
Qwest’s Omaha-based network operations and marketing employees already answer to vice presidents in Minneapolis, said Joanna Hjelmeland.
Specific changes for Omaha’s workforce will “become more clear down the road,” Hjelmeland said.
“We are combining two companies, and in some instances there are going to be redundancies,” she said. “Eventually there are going to be job reductions as a result of the merger.”
CenturyLink’s new regional structure:
• Eastern, headquarters in Wake Forest: President Todd Schafer, current president of Century Link’s Mid-Atlantic region. Member states are Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
• Midwest, headquarters in Minneapolis: President Duane Ring, current president of CenturyLink’s Northeast region; Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin.
• Mountain, headquarters in Denver: President Kenny Wyatt, current president of CenturyLink’s South Central region; Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming.
• Southern, headquarters in Orlando: President Dana Chase, current president of CenturyLink’s Southern region; Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana; Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas.
& bull; Northwest, headquarters in Seattle: President Brian Stading, current vice president of network operations and engineering for Qwest; California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington.
• Southwest, headquarters in Phoenix: President Terry Beeler, current president of CenturyLink’s Western region; Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada.
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