JPMorgan to keep ex-WaMu center open
Orleans County breathed a major sigh of relief Monday, as JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced that the former Washington Mutual customer service center in Albion will stay open with full staffing.
The announcement means 800 workers will keep their jobs at the facility, which is the largest employer in the rural county between Buffalo and Rochester.
That job security had not been certain, after the New York-based banking giant took over the center from its former owner, Seattlebased Washington Mutual.
Thousands of job cuts were expected because of overlap, and indeed, the bank said Monday that it would cut a total of 9,200 jobs at WaMu, with 4,000 by the end of January and the rest by the end of 2009.
However, JPMorgan Chase said Monday afternoon that the Albion facility will continue to operate as is, maintaining its current function of answering customer calls about consumer banking and mortgages nationwide. The name on the building will eventually change next year, said spokesman Michael Fusco.
“The whole county is pleased,” said James Whipple, CEO of the Orleans County Industrial Development Agency. “A lot of people worked hard at this, particularly all the employees there. It showed that Orleans County has a workforce that Chase values. We appreciate Chase’s decision.”
The cuts elsewhere by JPMorgan Chase come as the bank is now in the process of integrating the operations of the former WaMu, which it acquired after regulators closed it in the largest bank or thrift failure in U. S. history. WaMu, once the nation’s biggest savings bank, had been hammered by mortgage defaults, especially on so-called option-adjustable-rate loans, and both investors and customers lost confidence.
JPMorgan has already said it will close a WaMu operations center in Pleasanton, Calif., and cut 1,200 jobs there and another 400 in nearby San Francisco, both of which are higher-cost areas. The company is also cutting about 3,000 investment banking jobs across all levels, asset classes and geographic regions by the end of the year, and some observers expect more cuts to come in 2009.
Worries about the Albion call center had prompted Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., and Rep. Louise Slaughter, DFairport, to lobby bank executives to save the facility. In part, they argued that the lower-cost of the facility, together with JPMorgan Chase’s large branch, customer, and employee presence in nearby Rochester, justified keeping the operation open.
“I spoke to the highest officials at JPMorgan Chase over the weekend and I am glad that they heeded my call to keep the center open,” Schumer said in a statement issued Monday. “I will do everything I can, working with the local community and the state, to fight hard for the long term viability of the call center.”
Fusco did not say if the bank might increase staffing at the site in the future. “We review all of our facilities in the normal course of business, and that counts for Albion, too,” he said.
That’s just fine for Whipple. “We’re just happy right now,” he said. “We’re just going to take this news today and enjoy it and go from there.”
