Since BB&T Corp.’s acquisition of National Penn Bancshares in 2016, a succession of jobs has come and gone at the company’s downtown Allentown regional headquarters.
That year, the bank added 30 employees to its downtown call center at the Two City Center office building — after the bank eliminated a third of its 240-person workforce there.
BB&T’s yo-yo employment situation in Allentown continued Thursday, when the bank announced it would eliminate the 30 call center jobs, plus about 20 more, when it closes its call center in mid-June.
“After careful consideration, we’ve made the decision to close our corporate call center located in Allentown,” spokesman David White said. “We understand this is a difficult time for these associates and we will support them through this transition with respect and compassion.”
He said the bank will help affected employees find other jobs inside and outside the company, including access to career transition services and severance packages.
White said North Carolina-based BB&T filed a notice with the state under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. A spokeswoman with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry said the state had not received the notice.
He also said the decision does not affect BB&T’s regional banking operations.
“BB&T is committed to the Allentown community, and that won’t change,” White said.
But while the company’s Pennsylvania headquarters will remain at Two City Center, the call center — where workers handle customers’ questions regarding accounts and other banking matters — will be farmed out to BB&T’s five other centers throughout its footprint, which covers 15 states and the District of Columbia.
When the call center workers exit, the Center City Allentown building will have about 180 people, White said. The bank employs about 500 people in the Lehigh Valley, with most of them at regional branches.
BB&T is not the first area bank to cut call-center operations in recent months. In October, Wells Fargo, the region’s largest bank in terms of branches and deposits, cut 470 positions when it closed a call center on Club Avenue in Bethlehem, at the Allentown border.
The decision to close set off a firestorm of criticism at Wells Fargo over whether those jobs were being outsourced to foreign call centers. While the bank denied such a move, the U.S. Labor Department awarded the workers free job retraining and other assistance through the Trade Adjustment Assistance program — essentially determining that the bank had shifted their work, or similar work, out of the country.
BB&T’s White said the local jobs are not going overseas. But asked why Allentown might have gotten singled out in job cuts among other call centers in North Carolina, Texas and Florida, he said, “This is part of BB&T’s ongoing effort to evaluate our operations in a highly competitive marketplace. As part of this process, we’re becoming a more efficient company in some areas and adding resources in others.”
BB&T, which is based in Winston-Salem, N.C., is the region’s second largest bank with 38 branches and about $2 billion in deposits, according to the latest Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Market Share Report. Overall, BB&T has $221.6 billion in assets, net income of $2.2 billion and about 3,500 employees at more than 2,000 banking offices, according to its financial data.
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