City It’s Started
posted by on November 11 at 14:12 PM
This, of course, was inevitable:
Formal notices won’t be going out until Dec. 1, but some employees of the former Washington Mutual banking operations already are being told informally they’ll be among those laid off by the bank’s new owner, JPMorgan Chase.
Employees in such groups and departments as human resources, legal, risk management, fraud management and compliance have been advised by supervisors that they’ll be getting layoff warning notices, and some have even been told not to show up for work between now and Dec. 1.
JPMorgan Chase isn’t saying how many have been told informally or how many will be laid off.
Federal regulators took control of Washington Mutual’s banking operations Sept. 25 and sold them to JPMorgan Chase the same day. In meetings with employees the following week, JPMorgan Chase officials said WaMu employees will wind up in one of three groups: those to be laid off, those who will stay for an extended transition period and those who will have permanent positions with the new company.
JPMorgan Chase plans to issue 60-day Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notices Dec. 1, with employees officially losing their jobs at the end of January. They’d also receive severance calculated on length of time with the company.
Washington Mutual had 43,000 employees nationally and 2,200 retail branches. But the brunt of the cuts is expected to fall in Seattle, where many of it administrative, operations and support personnel work in positions that duplicate jobs JPMorgan Chase already has. WaMu’s Seattle-area employment was more than 4,300.
Via P.I.
It occurs to me that the U.S. Government is involved in this merger. How many overpaid execs are keeping their jobs?
Keeping their jobs? Probably about half, I would assume. How many of those cut loose and land on a big pile of their already-accummulated wealth? All of them.
Kerry Killinger has disappeared off the face of the earth with his pockets stuffed with money the taxpayers had to backfill; I don't expect the rest of the bailout execs will be much different.
Bastards.
Yeah, where did Kerry K go anyway? I'd like to send him a Christmas card.
There aren't a lot of overpaid execs keeping their jobs - what, you think jpm didn't have execs of their own that they liked better? If I had to guess I'd say around 20% of the upper few levels stuck around. Many parts of their contracts weren't honored either, so they got screwed out of a fair amount of severance. JPM has been very fair to the rank and file workers though.
Oh, I think it was evitable.
I spoke with one of the branch managers in San Francisco shortly after the takeover was announced. He said layoffs were more likely to hit the east coast since that's where JP Morgan Chase has most of its workforce. One of the reasons they decided to acquire WAMU was to gain a footprint out west. He thought most of the folks who work at WAMU branches in WA, OR and CA would keep their jobs and just wear a different uniform. As for the upper management folks in Seattle, he couldn't say.
Let me know when it starts depressing the commercial real estate market. My office lease is up for renegotiation in March.