Quality Aircraft Services, a Miami-based company that provides skycaps and baggage workers to Miami International Airport, is set to layoff 227 workers, the South Florida Business Journal reports.

The company notified the state in a Worker Adjustment Notice and Retraining Act filing. The company intends to drop the axe on Sept. 30 when its contract with Miami-Dade County ends.

According to the report, the county first approved a three-year contract with Quality in 2004 and subsequently renewed the contract seven times for one-year.

The news was revealed in a notice recently filed with the state. It said the company had signed an agreement to sell “substantially all of its assets to an outside purchaser on July 26.

The Plain-Dealer reports the company’s Web site now says Insurance.com is owned by QuinStreet Inc., a publicly traded online marketing and media company that paid $16 million last year to buy the web domain Insure.com.

Additionally, the state filing said the buyer “does not intend to continue operations at this facility” and that the closure “will result in the elimination of all positions and jobs at the facility.”

Affected positions will include computer programmers, web designers, accountants, administrative workers and top executives. The job cuts are slated to occur between Sept. 26 and July 2011.

Insurance.com allows customers to compare rates  from car and home insurance companies.

The St. Louis Business Journal reports Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney made the announcement in a conference call with analysts and investors on Wednesday. The number of layoffs at the Hazelwood facility was not specified. According to the report, Boeing previously issued 60-day layoff notices to 1,020 employees in February that included some in St. Louis.

Boeing, which reported an 8 percent drop in revenue in the second quarter, has suffered largely because of a $160 billion overhaul of the U.S. Army’s land warfare weapons program, the St. Louis Business Journal reports.

Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security division is one of the largest employers in St. Louis with 16,000 workers locally and 68,000 employees worldwide.

The job cuts will include corporate staff and field support jobs. Coupled with the store closures, Winn-Dixie hopes to save between $12 million and $17 million a year. The moves will be completed by the end of the quarter on Sept. 22.

Wall Street Journal reports the locations for the stores that will be closed will be available on the company’s Web site Thursday.

Winn-Dixie operates 514 retail grocery stores in five Southern states.

axe layoffs

A report out Tuesday said local governments throughout the United States could cut a total of almost 500,000 jobs over the next year to account for sliding revenue and the need for more social services, Bloomberg reports.

According to the report, local governments are on their way to cutting the equivalent of 8.6 percent of their workforces from 2009 to 2011. That would mean 481,000 people or more will lose their jobs, Bloomberg said.

The report was drafted based on a survey conducted by the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties.

The loss in revenue is largely based on the decreasing property taxes and a decline in state and federal aid. The report calls for Congress to pass a bill that would provide $75 billion over the next two years to local governments and community-based groups to help job growth and reduce the need for cuts.

Space Shuttle

Keeping true to its promise, United Space Alliance will issue today and tomorrow some 1,000 layoff notices to its space shuttle mission employees at the Kennedy Space Center.  The layoffs, Click Orlando reports, will occur later this year and come as a result of the ramping down and the eventual elimination of NASA’s shuttle program.  Two additional flights, and potentially a third, remain for the aging shuttles after nearly 30 years of service.

United Space Alliance currently employs a total of 8,100 workers at their Florida, Texas, and Alabama sites.  Officials from that company plan on reducing its overall workforce by 15 percent as a result of the cancellation.  Experts predict that as many as 8,000 total Kennedy Space Center employees could lose their jobs when the shuttle program shuts down.

San Antonio Flag

With the threat lurking of closing its Northwest side San Antonio office completely, Transcom Worldwide has plans to let go of over 700 of its employees there, says the San Antonio Business Journal.  The layoffs are the result of the “realignment” by one of its bigger U.S. customers, Comcast, of its billing systems vendors.

Transcom, which is based in Luxembourg and has facilities located in 29 countries, provides call management services to its clients, like Comcast, and the change in Comcast billing practices- here a euphemism for firing Transcom- will virtually shut down Transcom’s San Antonio site by eliminating the need of some 737 employees dedicated to that single client.  The cuts are to go into effect beginning September 1.

United Technologies

From an NPR newsflash: United Technologies has plans to slash an additional 1,500 jobs by the end of 2011.  The Hartford-based parent company of Pratt & Whitney, Otis Elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft submitted a filing with regulators today stating it plans for restructuring and other costs related to the job eliminations.

Earlier this year, the company announced that it would cut 900 other positions as of June of this year.  In addition it shed some 11,600 jobs in 2009.  United has yet to indicate from which of its divisions or from which geographic regions the current round of sacks will come.

blue cross blue shield

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island slashed its payroll Wednesday with 58 layoffs and the elimination of 48 other vacant positions.

WPRI.com reports it is the third round of layoffs in Rhode Island for Blue Cross Blue Shield. The insurer cut 39 jobs in September 2007 and an additional 74 jobs a year later. The latest cuts were made “to ensure BCBSRI’s financial stability” by reducing expenses and to help keep health care costs from rising further for its roughly 600,000 members,” spokeswoman Laura Calenda said.

Blue Cross still has more than 1,000 employees in Rhode Island following the 103 job cuts. It is the state’s largest health insurer.  According to WPRI, Blue Cross covered 79 percent of Rhode Island’s insured population in 2007.

Applied Materials

Barron’s: This morning nanotech manufacturer Applied Materials announced that it would be cutting anywhere from 400-500 jobs from its solar energy products division.  The division is part of the company’s Energy and Environmental Solutions segment and the cuts come as the result of a planned restructuring of that group.   Increased focus on crystalline silicon solar and advanced energy tech, including LED projects, will replace the manufacture and sales of Applied Materials’ more traditional solar panel products.

Of the discontinuation of its SunFab line of products, Applied CEO Mike Splinter cited the lack of mass-scale solar power adoption as one of several reasons for a focus shift:

[W]hile Applied has delivered significant innovations with our SunFab production line and made substantial progress on our technology roadmap, the thin film market has been negatively impacted by several factors, including delays in utility-scale solar adoption, solar panel manufacturers’ challenges in obtaining affordable capital, changes and uncertainty in government renewable energy policies, and competitive pressure from crystalline silicon technologies.

Such news certainly brings into view the paradoxical nature of green tech and the hope pinned to it of job creation.  Does Splinter mean that their is no future for mass-scale use of solar energy in the U.S. or simply that new more marketable technologies need to be developed before such mass-scale use can be realized?