US Cellular to Ax 4,100 Jobs Nationally, 86 in WA as Part of T-Mobile Acquisition

A WARN alert from the WA State Employment Security Department (Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification) Thursday says 86 US Cellular workers in WA will be let go, as part of a national 4,100 worker reduction.

   The WARN Alert did not specify what locations

Consumers may not know last May, T-Mobile announced they were acquiring virtually all of the US Cellular assets for $4.4 billion dollars. T-Mobile said it included all the US Cellular stores and customers, as well as certain specified spectrum assets. The sale will be approved, according to the two parties, most likely by mid 2025.

Many of  the affected workers will be offered work at T-Mobile,  an Iowa WARN Alert indicated many of the workers will be offered wages and packages comparable not more than what they were making with US Cellular.

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WA State WARN Alerts do not contain specific layoffs as to how many workers at any location are going away, only the affected cities and total number of workers.

The WA WARN Alert did say some workers are in Centralia, Kennewick, Longview, Pasco, Sunnyside, Yakima  and Union Gap. The layoffs are expected to happen June 2nd.  The exact number of US Cellular customers in WA is not known, but according to their locator map, there are either 17 or 18 official 'factory' stores in WA, including the locations in Pasco and Kennewick.

How will this affect current US Cellular customers?  The Chicago-based company has just over 4.4 million customers in 21 states from Illinois west, including the Pacific NW.  US Cellular customers will become T-Mobile customers, and can either keep their existing plan or migrate to a T-Mobile plan of their choice.