Aftershocks of Cutback at Columbia Pictures : The Company and Its Ex-Employees Are Still Trying to Come to Terms With Dismissal Process

Jill Spady thought the bloodletting at Columbia Pictures was over.

But the 29-year-old secretary recently got a call from personnel--fully two months after the studio launched its massive job reduction.

“Absolutely out of the blue,” as Spady put it, she learned that her position, too, was gone.

Spady isn’t the only one who’s confused, however. Four people told The Times they were pink-slipped by Columbia, and then suddenly asked to stay on--at least for the time being.

“My feeling is that they cut a little bit too deep,” speculated a Columbia marketing executive who has so far survived the layoffs. “I think they realized . . . that they would need certain people who were terminated.”

Clearly, it’s been a mean season for Columbia and its workers.

In one of the bigger mass layoffs ever to hit Hollywood, the studio in December began eliminating about 750 out of its 2,700 positions. Company executives have said the step was intended to reduce costs in the wake of the studio’s merger with Tri-Star Pictures under a newly formed New York-based parent company, Columbia Pictures Entertainment.

Two months later, however, the studio and its ex-employees are only beginning to come to terms with a dismissal process that, according to survivors and ex-employees alike, disregarded long-standing employee loyalties to the studio, pushed hundreds of people into an uncertain job market and left much of the company short-handed and dispirited.

“Morale is low. People are going to be swamped,” warned Spady, who worked in various departments at the studio beginning in 1982.

In fact, Columbia is already scrambling to fill at least some positions that were marked for elimination--partially validating prophecies by ex-employees that the studio wouldn’t be able to function without them.

Victoria Cohen, a Columbia vice president and spokeswoman of the studio’s New York-based parent, declined to comment. Columbia president Dawn Steel, through a spokesman, also declined to comment. Steel took charge of the studio after ex-Columbia chief David Puttnam resigned following the merger announcement last fall.

Caught in the ensuing shake-up, most Columbia “orphans” have had little choice but to cope with their predicament, and with a welter of sometimes conflicting emotions that range from optimism about individual job prospects to bitterness toward the entire movie business.

“I’m angry at the industry,” said one former Columbia manager, with more than 20 years of show business experience.

The manager claimed the layoff was

ill-coordinated and arbitrary. Like several other ex-employees, however, he declined to be quoted by name, for fear that criticism of Columbia would jeopardize his future job prospects in the close-knit studio community.

“It’s a small business. Everybody knows everybody,” he said. “They don’t want to hire people who violate rules of the Old Boy’s club.”

Other former Columbia workers were more stoical, though few were certain about their future in a period when New World Entertainment, Taft Entertainment, and other Hollywood companies have similarly trimmed jobs to shore up profits.

Of more than a dozen ex-Columbia employees interviewed by The Times, none said they were in severe financial straits, partly because of studio severance packages that ranged from several million dollars for former Columbia chairman Puttnam to several weeks pay for lower-paid union workers.

Only a handful of those interviewed had quickly found new studio jobs. Yet only one said she might consider leaving the movie business--a secretary who said that, as a last resort, she might take on temporary office work or go into business for herself.

Several ex-employees insisted that Columbia had handled the dismissals well, particularly by providing career counselors from an outside consulting firm to help prepare resumes and deal with emotional stress.

Yet virtually all said they were disappointed at having lost choice, and hard-to-replace, jobs in a glamorous industry.

“It underlined the fact that you’re never secure, no matter who you are. Someone can always pull the rug out from under you,” said one former Columbia advertising executive.