Hundreds laid off at Fleet offices
Bank of America Corp. yesterday laid off hundreds of workers at Fleet bank branches across the Northeast as the North Carolina bank began to implement its brand of customer service on the institution it purchased for $48 billion in April. The changes signal a shift toward a heavier reliance on part-time tellers, which would improve customer service during peak hours but also could allow the company to save on costs, Fleet employees said.
The bank yesterday told hundreds of former FleetBoston Financial Corp. employees they would need to move from their current branch, reduce or change their hours, or lose their jobs altogether.
Many first learned of the decision through news reports yesterday morning and, when they arrived at work, were told they no longer had jobs and that they needed to leave immediately.
"My manager said, 'I need you to leave before 9 a.m. because we don't want to have any impact on the customers," said one former Fleet employee in Pennsylvania, who asked to remain anonymous because he plans to ask the bank for a reference. "I was shocked. I was completely blindsided."
One Fleet branch manager north of Boston said the bank plans to increase its reliance on part-time tellers as a lower-cost way to add staff during busy times. The manager, who asked to remain anonymous, said the arrangement also allows Bank of America to say that its branch reorganization is adding staff members across New England, rather than describing it as a layoff.
The bank has said it will keep the same number of jobs in New England, though it has long said it would cut some jobs and add others. A bank spokeswoman did not return several phone calls yesterday seeking comment on the plans. It also remained unclear yesterday whether part-time tellers would receive benefits.
Both banks do seem to be in the market for part-time tellers. Of 11 teller jobs posted recently by Fleet on Monster.com, nine are for part-timers. Bank of America has several thousand teller jobs across the country posted on its website, and most appear to be part time as well. The Fleet listings described the jobs as about 20 hours a week. One, for an opening in Maine, puts the salary at between $6 and $13 an hour.
Bank of America has not publicly disclosed the number of layoffs in Fleet branches, or how many people would move around. A spokeswoman said Tuesday night the layoffs ultimately would take away jobs in some branches and add jobs in others.
Bank of America has successfully used part-time tellers to build a reputation for customer service across the country, said Tony Plath, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He said the bank's flexible staffing model ultimately means shorter wait times for customers, and very high levels of customer satisfaction -- what the bank calls "customer delight."
Unlike traditional banks, where tellers stand behind a barrier and wait on customers, Bank of America fans out many of its staff members to areas around the floor to meet them. That means fewer people stand in line, and the bank workers can focus on building relationships with customers, rather than just waiting on them.
"It's more flexible and more visible -- a different kind of model," he said. "Customers have responded really positively, and they build market share using it. On both accounts, it has been successful."
For some Fleet employees yesterday, the bank's decision to shift employees from job to job, with little warning, was at least as painful as a layoff.
In Braintree, a branch manager stopped by one Fleet employee's home yesterday morning to deliver the news. The woman had been a sales and service representative at Fleet, a job that allowed her to meet customers at the door, and help them with financial questions. She had been taking classes for an master's degree in business administration.
But sitting side by side on the couch, the branch manager told the woman, a single mother of five, that the bank wanted her to be a teller instead. She'll lose her sales commissions -- which run as much as $5,000 per year -- and likely forfeit her annual raise, she said.
As for her MBA, most of which Fleet had agreed to fund, she was told she could forget about that. "Tellers don't need MBAs," said the woman, summarizing what her human resources manager told her. She did not want her name used to avoid any more problems with the bank. She now may quit Fleet altogether.
Some New England public officials yesterday questioned Bank of America's decision to lay off branch employees. Connecticut's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said in a statement he has asked Bank of America to detail the number and location of layoffs in his state and explain how the bank plans to fill those empty positions.
"The commitments made by Bank of America to me, both oral and written, were clean and concise: That current employment levels will be kept constant, if not increased, and no overall staffing numbers will be cut," he said.
In downtown Boston yesterday, television news crews camped out at bank branches and customers anxiously scanned the tellers looking for familiar faces. One woman visiting the Summer Street Fleet branch asked the teller how many people had been laid off.
Customers also felt the impact: David Nolan, who has been a Fleet customer for more than 15 years, said he now is thinking about leaving the bank.
"This is part of the latest paradigm, where things are getting gobbled up and individual rank and file are paying the price for it," Nolan said. "I don't think that's right."
One Fleet employee at the bank's 100 Federal St. headquarters downtown, who declined to be identified, said she first heard the news yesterday morning. She had no clue until then that hundreds of Fleet employees would be laid off. "People are a little weary of the merger," she said of her fellow employees. "They don't get as much information as they think they should."
Sasha Talcott can be reached at stalcott@globe.com; Wendy Lee at wlee@globe.com.
