The Bank of America Corp. laid off an unspecified number of workers Wednesday at Fleet Bank branches, a Boston-based spokeswoman said, but the number was “significantly less” than a 1,500 estimate published in The Boston Globe.
“I do not have an exact number for you,” said the bank’s Alison Gibbs. “I can tell you that the associates who were impacted are receiving a very attractive severance package, 17 to 48 weeks of pay, depending on how long they’ve been with the bank.”
Gibbs added that the layoffs are part of Bank of America’s conversion of Fleet branches to its “banking center” model, which has a different staffing setup. “They have had a lot of success with this model, and you can imagine, with banking centers all over the country, that it’s important to get consistency among all of the centers.”
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The cuts are part of the 12,500 jobs that Bank of America had predicted would be lost due to the merger, Gibbs said. Their impact will not be uniform, she said – some branches will actually gain employees. And in the long run, “I can tell you that we continue to be committed to maintaining job levels in this region.”
But assurances or not, key local officials were fuming.
“It’s outrageous behavior on their part,” said Massachusetts state Rep. John Quinn (D-Dartmouth), chair of the Joint Committee on Banks and Banking. “It hardly strikes me as how to treat your employees, or how to make your first big splash in the region.”
At a merger hearing in January, Bank of America had said it would sacrifice no more than 500 local jobs, Quinn said, and most of those would be to reduce redundancy within the new bank. They were to be all “back-office” positions. “They said that all ‘customer-facing’ – that means bank tellers – positions would be retained,” Quinn said.
Rhode Island state Rep. Brian P. Kennedy (D-Hopkinton), chair of the House Corporations Committee, which oversees banks, said the layoffs were so sudden, “it’s like waking up and having someone pour cold water on you.”
Gibbs said the Fleet employees who lost their jobs had all been told Wednesday, with the layoffs effective immediately. It was better that way, she said, because “you can image, if you’re told that your position has been eliminate, you may not feel comfortable sticking around doing your job for the rest of the day. It’s out of consideration for these impacted associates and also for the customers.”
As for earlier predictions that branch jobs would be safe, Gibbs said because there was no overlap in the Fleet and Bank of America retail footprints, “we didn’t anticipate impact in the branches.” But while no branch closures are planned, Fleet did have a “different model” that needed to be realigned with Bank of America.
The Globe report quoted a set of talking points that branch managers were supposed to use if asked why “customer-facing” jobs were being cut after all. The bank’s answer, the Globe reported, didn’t refute that initial prediction, but went on to talk about the need for “optimal staffing levels” necessary to provide “customer delight” at Fleet.
Raymond Filippone, associate director for unemployment insurance at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, said his office had “sort of aware” of possible Fleet layoffs since April, when it contacted a Fleet human-resources official and was told about 60 Rhode Islanders might lose their jobs as a result of the merger.
But “there was nothing definite about that number,” Filippone said, and the bank did not provide specifics. His office got no advance notice of last week’s layoffs, he said, and efforts by his staff to reach bank officials Wednesday – so they could expedite unemployment benefits and other services to the workers – were unsuccessful.
Bank of America announced earlier this year that it would cut 12,500 jobs nationally as part of the merger, but also that employment in New England would remain flat, though some jobs might be cut and new ones added. Fleet employed about 47,000 people before the merger, including about 4,000 in Rhode Island.
In May, Bank of America notified Massachusetts state officials that about 500 jobs would be cut in the Bay State within two years. No such notice has been given in Rhode Island.
In July, in a conference call with analysts, chief financial officer Marc Oken said the bank had already cut about 3,800 jobs as a result of the merger. The bank expects cost savings from the merger to total as much as $750 million by the end of 2004, Oken said.
