(The following story by Gregory Richards appeared on The Florida Times-Union website on February 4.)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Corp. will announce a second round of job cuts Thursday, part of a management restructuring plan announced last in November to cut the railroad’s costs and improve customer service.
CSX spokesman Adam Hollingsworth would not provide details on how many or what type of jobs will be eliminated. Employees will be notified at company meetings, he said.
But as the corporate restructuring advances, the second stage of cuts is expected to be larger than the last. In December, Jacksonville-based CSX, which owns one of the country’s largest railroads, trimmed 20 senior level managers. The transformation began at the top of CSX’s corporate ladder, where relatively few people hold powerful positions, and is working its way down to levels that contain more employees.
A total of 800 to 1,000 managerial, or non-union, jobs will be eliminated. Most of those cuts will occur on the First Coast, where 60 percent of CSX’s 5,000 non-union employees are based. Management layers will shrink from 11 to about 8.
CSX will finish paring jobs roughly by end of March, Michael Ward, CSX’s chairman and CEO, told investors during a conference call last week. He said the company had worked through the senior vice presidents, and was focusing on lower levels.
Some employees believe the restructuring is a necessity to make the company more efficient, even if it costs them their jobs, Ward said.
“While everybody’s concerned about their job, there’s been a lot of comments made to me … that this is the right thing to be doing, we do need to do this and I hope I’m one of the ones that remains. But if I’m not, I’m OK with it because it’s the right thing to do for the company,” Ward said.