Illinois: Tellabs will cut 300 jobs

Naperville, Illinois-based Tellabs Inc. said Friday it will cut about 300 jobs after it posted a $23 million loss in the fourth quarter.

CEO Dan Kelly said on a conference call that the company plans to cut expenses, including via the job cuts. The company, which has about 2,600 employees worldwide, would not specify where the job cuts would be.

Tellabs' fourth-quarter revenue was $242 million, compared with $317 million in the year-ago quarter. It also posted a net loss of $23 million, or 6 cents per share, in the fourth quarter, compared with a net loss of $5 million, or 1 cent per share, in the same period in 2011.

Overall, 2012 revenue was $1,05 billion, compared to $1.28 billion in 2011.

Illinois: Cardinal Health cutting 650 jobs in Waukegan

Health care manufacturing and distribution giant Cardinal Health Inc. is moving production out of north suburban Waukegan, a move that will cost some 650 local jobs. 

Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health disclosed Wednesday that it also would sell property in Waukegan, but the company will keep some operations there. Cardinal expects to incur a loss on the property sale, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cardinal will sell seven of the nine buildings at McGaw Park and consolidate Waukegan employees into the remaining two, a Cardinal Health spokeswoman said.

Cardinal's decision will leave about 700 employees in Waukegan, most of them professional jobs such as marketing, customer support and IT, according to the spokeswoman.

The production of surgical kits will move to South Carolina and Mexico, she said. The company is looking to sell a mix of office and industrial property totaling about 1.2 million square feet and will keep two office buildings totaling about 267,000 square feet, an executive said. He declined to disclose an asking price. The company also is planning a reorganization in El Paso, Texas, that will result in about 80 job cuts, according to Dow Jones, which reported Cardinal's moves Wednesday.

Chicago : Sun-Times warns of layoffs

Sun-Times Media LLC, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and other suburban papers, has warned employees that some workers could lose their jobs as the company consolidates suburban operations in its River North headquarters.

The company told employees of the possible cuts last week in a state-required letter called a WARN notice, named after the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires disclosure whenever a company expects it may cut 50 or more workers.

Sun-Times is still deciding how many jobs may be eliminated because that depends on the number of suburban workers who agree by Feb. 25 to relocate to the headquarters, said Ted Rilea, the company's vice president of labor relations and human resources. If not enough workers make the move, the company may have to hire workers downtown, but if all of them want to move, it will have to cut employees, he said in an interview.

The company expects to complete the move by March 25, according to a note published by the Newspaper Guild, a union that represents some Sun-Times workers and is negotiating a contract with the company for about 150 employees.

The union expressed its concerns to management about the impact of the move on workers, specifically the increased costs for transportation, said Dave Roeder, a union representative and Chicago Sun-Times business reporter.

Sun-Times Media told employees last month that it planned to close its suburban offices and move news editing and production workers, including 47 editorial assistants and copy editors, to the downtown headquarters while reporters mainly would remain in the suburbs.

United Continental to cut 600 management jobs

(Reuters) — United Continental Holdings Inc. posted a bigger fourth-quarter loss on Thursday as costs rose and revenue fell, and the carrier said it expects to cut more than 600 management and administrative jobs. The airline has been working to win back customers who turned to rivals after technology glitches hurt customer service. United made a number of changes to integrate as one carrier following its 2010 merger, including converting to a new computer reservation system.

Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Smisek said 2012 was tough, but things were looking up. "Our operations are running smoothly  and our customer satisfaction scores are climbing," he said during a conference call.

Still, United said it was taking actions to improve financial results. The company said its officer headcount was reduced by 7 percent in December and starting next month, management and administrative staff would be cut by 6 percent.

Smisek said a portion of the cuts would come from voluntary exit programs.

United Continental has more than 85,000 employees.

The world's largest carrier said its quarterly net loss widened to $620 million, or $1.87 a share, from $138 million, or 42 cents a share, a year earlier.

It took charges of $430 million in the quarter, with much of that tied to paying off pension obligations and costs for systems integration and training and severance.

Excluding items, United said the 2012 quarterly loss was 58 cents a share, compared with a 61-cent loss expected by analysts on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue fell 2.5 percent to $8.7 billion. Passenger revenue per available seat mile, a measure of pricing power and how full planes are, rose 0.6 percent in the quarter.

Operating costs rose 3.2 percent. Although fuel costs edged down 0.3 percent, expenses for salaries and maintenance materials were 4 percent and 9.2 percent higher, respectively.

Superstorm Sandy, which barreled through the U.S. Northeast in late October, reduced revenue by about $140 million and profit by about $85 million in the fourth quarter. The storm caused shutdowns at major New York area airports, including New Jersey's Newark Liberty International, where United operates a major hub.

Shares of United were up 2.3 percent to $25.57 in afternoon trading.