Dell Inc.'s Ottawa facilities will be shut down within the next three months, putting more than 1,000 people out of work by July.

Officials at Dell told the OBJ Wednesday that half of Dell's tech support call centre staff were given pink slips this morning. The other half will be asked to stay on until the start of July, at which point the entire facility will be shut down.

About 100 staff will remain on in Ottawa as sales staff, positions that would never have been created in the first place were it not for the call centre built here three years ago, said Dell Ottawa spokesperson Blair Patacairk.

They will join another 900 or so Dell sales staff in Canada: 800 of whom are in Toronto.

Where the 100 remaining in Ottawa will work remains to be seen, said Mr. Patacairk.

"For the time being, they will be here (Solandt Road facility)," he said. "As we exit all these folks out of the site, we're going to have to make a determination. We haven't made that decision yet."

Sources from within Dell, who wished to remain unnamed, first broke the story of Dell's impending closure to the OBJ, and added that most employees were offered up to three months' severance.

The closure, a company news release read, was part of Dell's "company-wide efforts to increase the efficiency of its business, improve performance and provide better value for customers."

The move was all about global competitiveness and cost efficiency, said Mr. Patacairk.

"It's not just Ottawa, Canada, or Edmonton, Canada," he said.

"It's not a testament to the quality and skill of the labour force (in Ottawa). They brought a lot to Dell over the past few years. It's a tough message to give."

The remaining XPS staff -- the tech support division assigned to Dell's upper-tier clients -- have jobs until June, and possibly as late as the start of July, but will then be given severances as well.

In total, the announcement is expected to add 1,100 people to Ottawa's unemployment rolls by the summer.

Technical support calls coming to the Ottawa site will be redirected to any of of Dell's other call centres, Mr. Patacairk said, "depending on the need and the type of calls." Those centres could be anywhere in Latin America, China, India, Philippines or other sites in North America.

At Queen's Park, meanwhile, a local opposition MPP called the shutdown of Dell's Ottawa facilities "the latest casualty of the McGuinty government's tax and spend policy."

Speaking in the provincial Legislature Wednesday, Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod also called on the premier to deliver an economic stimulus package to minimize the uncertainty faced by the soon-to-be-unemployed Dell employees.

Yesterday, the OBJ reported that extra security was called in today, and that all of Dell's Ottawa managers were sequestered in a 2 p.m. meeting yesterday, leading employees to speculate that bad news was on the way.

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April 23 newsrelease from Dell