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Chamber of Commerce ready to provide job placement services to laid-off Thomson Reuters workers

The head of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce says his organization didn’t get any warning about the decision by Thomson Reuters to close its Rochester offices, but Bob Duffy says the chamber stands ready to help displaced workers.

Thomson Reuters has provided little information about the move except to say it routinely looks at ways to run its operations more efficiently and that sometimes includes reviews of its real estate portfolio.

The company has not said how many workers are affected, but Duffy believes it may be around 425.

In any case, Duffy says the Rochester economy is capable of helping find work for a lot of the affected employees.

“We’re very resilient in Rochester, and as you know if you go back to our history here for the last two or three decades, when closings do happen, those jobs seem to get assimilated into our economy and we seem to do a pretty good job , maybe absorbing some of those employees.”

Duffy notes that a number of local businesses are looking for workers now in what has been a tightening of the labor market.

“With the workforce issues today, I find that a lot of CEO’s, a lot of companies have a very hard time finding good experienced employees. We have a lot of unfilled jobs and so this could be an opportunity for some. Whether they fit specifically with what their needs are, I don’t know, but we certainly are going to do an outreach and offer to help anyway that we can,” Duffy said.

Duffy says the Chamber has a staffing and placement agency that can help connect workers with available openings.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.