JPMorgan Chase Lays Off 244 Employees In Texas As It Closes Plano Call Centre

JPMorgan Chase has laid off hundreds of workers at its campus in Plano, Texas. The company is shuttering a call centre in Plano, leaving 244 employees out of work.

The layoffs were announced on Tuesday. The affected employees will receive formal 60-day notices under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, as per CBS.

JPMorgan Chase stated that workers will be eligible for severance pay. It promised that the employees would receive assistance in finding other positions within the firm or via outplacement services.

JPMorgan Chase told CBS News Texas that the layoffs were part of a move to consolidate a small operations team into larger existing operations centres.

“We regularly review our business needs and adjust our staffing accordingly — creating new roles where we see the need or reducing positions when appropriate,” the statement read.

The bank reaffirmed its commitment to Plano, where it employs more than 12,500 workers. JPMorgan Chase has over 800 open positions in Plano currently.

"This impacts a small operations team that we are consolidating to our larger existing Operations locations," the company's statement explained, adding, "We are working hard to redeploy impacted employees.”

Last month, the financial behemoth laid off 305 workers in New Jersey, as per NorthJersey.com. This included 120 workers in May, 134 in June and 51 in August.

The company's spokesperson Briana Nowell explained that the decision impacted "a very small number of employees."

The layoffs come amid concerns that artificial intelligence could lead to job cuts. Several companies, such as Wix and Cloudflare, have attributed layoffs to AI.

In March, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon had warned that AI could lead to job losses in the US. He suggested that the government can create an incentive system for firms to help soften the blow, as per CNBC.

“But the government could create a system of incentives that businesses do the right thing to retrain people, early retirement, moving people ... if we have the right system in place, we can accommodate much quicker,” he said.

The JPMorgan boss warned that AI-driven economic changes would happen quickly in comparison to other recent technological advances that changed the economy, like the internet.