Wireless phone service provider UScellular will cut 232 positions in the Corridor and nearly 500 positions in Iowa overall, according to notifications posted to the Iowa Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act website.
The company on Tuesday announced plans to lay off an estimated 4,100 workers nationwide as part of its acquisition by T-Mobile, including workers at several company-owned stores in Iowa.
According to the WARN site notifications, 214 UScellular workers will be laid off in Cedar Rapids, including 183 at a UScellular call center in southwest Cedar Rapids and 31 workers at corporate-owned US Cellular stores at 2315 Edgewood Rd. SW, 5300 Edgewood Rd. NE and at Lindale Mall, 4444 First Ave. NE.
The layoffs will also impact 10 UScellular store employees in Iowa City and eight in Coralville.
All the layoffs are effective June 2, according to the WARN notices.
In a March 26 letter to James Clopton, program manager with the U.S. Department of Employment Services, UScellular employee relations director Izik Youker wrote that “employment separations” with remote employees, as well as employees at corporate-owned US Cellular stores, “are planned to commence on June 2, 2025 or within 14 days thereafter.”
However, Mr. Youker said in the letter that “a majority” of affected UScellular employees will be offered employment with T-Mobile “at a salary or wage rate and with benefits that, when taken as a whole, are no less favorable to these employees’ current salary or wage rate and benefits.”
In May 2024, T-Mobile agreed to acquire UScellular’s wireless operations and select spectrum assets in a deal valued at an estimated $4.4 billion. The deal is expected to close in mid-2025.
Based in Chicago, UScellular is the fourth-largest full-service wireless carrier in the United States.
