370 to lose jobs through layoffs at bank, barge maker

• By CHRIS GAUTREAU AND GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writers
• Published: May 21, 2009 - Page: 1A

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About 370 Baton Rouge-area jobs are being lost in the maritime and banking industries.

Trinity Marine Products, a barge maker in Brusly, told 190 employees on Tuesday they’ll be cut in mid-July. Blaming a downturn in orders for its barges, the cuts take effect July 17 and will hit both hourly and administrative employees. The Brusly plant will remain open.

On Wednesday, Capital One bank cut its local work force by 180 at an Industriplex Boulevard call center the bank has operated in Baton Rouge since 1999.

Those companies’ layoffs come on top of The Advocate’s announcement Tuesday that it will notify 49 employees today of job cuts as the paper struggles with a downturn in revenue from national advertisers.

Officials at Capital One Financial Corp., the Virginia-based credit card giant that entered banking with its 2005 acquisition of New Orleans-based Hibernia Corp., said the decision to trim 180 positions from its Baton Rouge area work force of 830 people resulted from a regular review aimed at making its business more efficient.

The decision was not linked to any prior companywide staff reductions announced, said Stephen Thorpe, a New Orleans-based spokesman for the company. Capital One has nearly 26,000 employees, posted 2008 sales of $13.8 billion and has 44 million credit card customers, according to Hoover’s Inc.

Capital One’s banking operations are chiefly in Louisiana, Texas, New York and New Jersey, though it recently acquired Chevy Chase Bank, which has about $11 billion in deposits in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

The job functions lost in Baton Rouge will be replaced by employees in Laurel, Md., and suburban Dallas, Thorpe said

“This is a business decision that relates to our business banking division,” he said. “We’re adding positions in those other communities, but it’s not the same number. It’s not a one-for-one (exchange).”

Capital One will add 40 jobs in Maryland to replace small-business telephone sales and servicing functions that were in Baton Rouge. In Texas, the company will add 30 jobs to replace Baton Rouge consumer sales and consumer lending, underwriting, loan processing and related positions.

The Maryland and Texas sites are existing operating centers that can efficiently fold in the Baton Rouge functions, Thorpe said. About 130 of the Baton Rouge jobs will end in July and the remainder in November, with Capital One giving the employees a chance to apply for other company positions that come open.

Some jobs could remain at the Industriplex Boulevard call center, but Capital One didn’t know Wednesday what that number might be. Capital One said it’s providing severance packages and training assistance to the workers losing their jobs.

“This was a difficult decision and one that Capital One leaders did not take lightly,” Thorpe said, adding the decisions weren’t related to performance. “The bank and its predecessors (Hibernia, Fidelity National Bank) in Baton Rouge date back 72 years, so we’re proud to be a key bank in the area and a good corporate citizen.”