Texas Based Company To Slash 80 Jobs In Tulsa

A Texas company with an office in Tulsa is cutting 80 jobs. Direct Energy says it's still committed to Tulsa and may even grow in the future.

Direct Energy is headquartered in Houston but its billing, collections, and other office work is done here. This week's development comes nearly six months after the company announced it was hiring 115 people.

"The decisions we made were both very difficult and well thought out," Direct Energy COO Dennis Weikle said. "We know we're impacting people's lives so we took them very seriously."

The company works out of several floors at CityPlex Tower. This week it told 80 people they would be losing their jobs.

"This type of messaging any time is never easy and, again, it's difficult and that's why we're taking it so seriously and giving them such lengthy transitions," Weikle said.

Weikle says the employees will stay with the company until November 15th. He says they'll be given help to find a new job, as well as a severance package once they leave the company.

Weikle admits some employees were hired within the last 30 days but couldn't say whether any of those will be losing their jobs.

The news comes more than five months after Direct Energy announced it planned to hire 115 people by the end of the first quarter of this year. In November a company representative told us.

"We have had great success with the Tulsa employees and the Tulsa operation and, as we grow in an efficient fashion, we plan to build on that base that exists in Tulsa rather than the other options that we had," Weikle said.

But since then, Weikle says the company began streamlining and found ways to automate some of its systems. He says Tulsa is still an important place for the company.

It recently signed a 5 year lease to move its 220 employees in August into the Road Sciences building on Yale.

"We wouldn't have done that if we were not committed to Tulsa and the employees here," he said.

Weikle says the company could still grow in the future. He says there's always a chance it could merge with other companies but there's no way to know if that will impact Tulsa.