Loss of Walmart wireless services contract leads to 302 layoffs

T-Roc Global, a Miami company that provides sales support to businesses, is laying off 302 people after losing a contract to sell wireless services at Walmart stores in Florida.

The layoffs include 59 employees at 29 stores along the Gulf Coast.

In a letter to the state, the company says the retailer did not renew a contract for its Walmart Wireless Sales Program, which expires May 31.

Employees will be paid until then and T-Roc says it has “secured positions for the majority of the affected employees with the companies” taking over the contract.

A T-Roc spokesperson says 98% of the employees have been placed.

The company sent the letter to state officials to meet WARN Notice requirements. Companies, according to federal law, have to provide states with Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification notices when making job cuts.

According to T-Roc’s website, it worked with Walmart to support store-within-a-store wireless departments, providing staffing, tech consultation and end-to-end program management.

On the site it boasts of its success, saying sales grew 675% in the first six months of pilot program in one store and in three years it was operating in 1,300 locations nationwide. (It did not give a date for the pilot program.)

Given that success, T-Roc called losing the contract an “unanticipated non-renewal.”

Despite what the company says in the letter,  a spokesperson with a public relations firm representing T-Roc says in an email that the WARN letter was sent for "a project that was completed."

"T-ROC wants to strongly emphasize that the repositioning of staff is not reflective of T-ROC’s current status," the spokesperson writes. "The project recently completed, so those specific positions are being repositioned." 

Asked about the discrepancies between the official letter to the state and the statement, the spokesperson wrote "that while it was unanticipated, it ultimately was a mutually agreed upon decision between both parties."

The spokesperson did not respond to a second follow up question asking if there was an end date to the contract and, if there was, how could Walmart's decision be classified as unanticipated in the letter to the state.

Walmart did not respond to questions about why it did not renew the contract.

Updated: This story has been updated to include a statement from a T-Roc Global spokesperson.