Workers laid off because of Obama re-election, calling company says

Promark Research Corporation became the latest company to cut dozens of call center employees, announcing the layoffs Tuesday afternoon.

The people associated with Promark are not shy about saying that the layoffs happened because President Barack Obama was re-elected.

More than 100 people working at the Promark call center in Ammon blame President Obama’s reelection for costing them their jobs, but not because of his policies.

“We’re supposed to call the shift hotline and it tells us there’s no shifts,” said one Promark employee who came to us anonymously.

He said he hasn’t been scheduled to work since the day after the election, remembering something his boss told him since he started working there this past summer.

“(My boss) told us that if Romney gets in, we’ll for sure have a job for the next four years, but if Obama gets in, it’s a 10 percent chance if not less.”

Eastern Idaho has seen three call centers close since election day. At least two of them conduct political polls. Logically, the employees would have been out of work because the election is over.

People are crying foul, specifically blaming President Obama’s policies for forcing people out of work.

“The owners of the business cannot afford what Obamacare is going to cost them,” one viewer commented on our Facebook page.

“Many other companies planning layoffs because of this socialist health care plan,” commented another.

Randall Perrier, an attorney for the Texas-based Promark, said that had Mitt Romney been elected, the company’s Ammon call center would have stayed open.

“Had the election gone in a different direction, Promark was optimistic they’d be able to see enough work coming through that they’d be able to keep that center open,” said Perrier.

Perrier said the reason for the layoffs was not economical — it was purely political.

“It’s no secret they did a lot of work for the Republican party and for Gov. Romney,” Perrier said. “Had Romney been re-elected, there’d be the potential for additional polling for doing tracking polls for other related public opinion surveys.”

Promark opened its Ammon office in July.Its lease here was only until the end of 2012.