BofA to Move Card Center, 1,300 Jobs Out of Pasadena

In a cost-cutting move affecting 1,300 workers, Bank of America next year will move its credit card center in Pasadena to Phoenix, bank officials confirmed Thursday.

Betty Riess, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based bank, said the number of employees who will eventually lose their jobs is unclear. She said that some employees will be offered jobs in Phoenix and that the bank will try to find other positions for those unable to move. The move is expected to take place in the second or third quarter of next year.

Pasadena city officials, in a press conference Thursday, said the move represented “callous indifference” by B of A to the fate of 1,300 employees, mainly minorities and women, many with only high school educations, who staff the card operations.

“For a lot of single mothers, the B of A credit card center is what keeps them from being homeless,” said Rick Cole, a member of the Board of Directors, Pasadena’s equivalent to a city council. “The impact for Pasadena is largely going to be a people impact.”

City Director William Paparian said the board will consider whether to withdraw more than $100 million in annual deposits from the bank as a result of its relocation.

Riess, the bank spokeswoman, said the bank plans to work with its employees to relocate them or find them other jobs. She added that employees and city officials were told about the decision, which was made Wednesday, in a timely manner.

B of A employs about 2,300 people in Pasadena, a figure that includes the card center, branch and other operations. It is the city’s sixth-largest employer behind such institutions and companies as Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, Huntington Memorial Hospital and Parsons Corp.

City officials pointed out that the city’s redevelopment agency in 1971 assembled land for the bank operations and shaved $1.2 million off the purchase price to encourage B of A to locate in Pasadena. William Reynolds, the city’s Director of Housing and Development, said 14 years remain on the bank’s lease with McCaslin Lloyd Investment Co., the developer that built the building for the bank.

In a statement distributed to employees at the center, the bank said Arizona “offers us an environment where we can conduct our business in a more cost efficient way and better position us for the competitive decade ahead.”

The move will reduce costs in part because salaries are lower in Arizona than California due to Arizona’s lower cost of living. A statement given employees said that although their present salaries will not be cut should they be transferred to Phoenix, they will shift to the bank’s lower-paying “Plan B” salary structure because of the reduced cost of living. The statement added that future salary increases for those relocating to Arizona will be pegged to the lower-paying plan.

BankAmerica Corp., Bank of America’s parent, last year acquired a 400,000-square-foot building in Phoenix to house the credit unit as part of its acquisition of the failed MeraBank thrift in Phoenix.

B of A also will relocate a similar 600-employee operation in San Francisco to Phoenix later this year. The Pasadena and San Francisco centers handle billings, collections and customer service for more than 6 million Visa and MasterCard holders.