(The Florida Times-Union published the following story by Christopher Calnan on its website on July 18.)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation cut 143 jobs this week, most of them operations department supervisors and nearly half of them in Jacksonville, railroad officials confirmed yesterday.
CSXT spokesman Adam Hollingsworth said the workers were notified Tuesday and Wednesday. The layoffs are being done to cut supervisory positions with the expectation that doing so will speed up the company’s decision-making process.
“The positions eliminated were in areas where we had redundancy or excess management layers that could be reduced without affecting rail operations of customer service,” Hollingsworth said.
All the laid-off workers are non-union employees, 65 of them are in Jacksonville, he said.
CSXT, the nation’s third-largest railroad, plans to reduce its workforce by 900 through layoffs and attrition this year, Hollingsworth said.
In December, CSXT cut 67 jobs and put a freeze on 135 open positions.
Last month, the company said it planned to cut 200 customer-service jobs at its Southside facility starting in August. About 1,100 of CSXT employees work in the Southpointe office park, near Butler Boulevard and Interstate 95. All of the workers are members of the Transportation and Communications Union.
Earlier this month, sister company CSX Technology said it was cutting six jobs in its security group as the company outsourced positions with a security contractor.
Hollingsworth said all the laid-off workers have been given severance packages and offered assistance in their job searches.
TCU Local Chairman George Rowe couldn’t be reached for comment yesterday. Hollingsworth said the company has eliminated about 400 positions so far this year and CSXT is on track to reach its goal of cutting 900 jobs.
“We’re always looking for ways to size our company appropriately,” he said. “This downsizing really reflects a drive to scale our organization to a number that’s necessary to serve our customers well.”
In May, CSX announced first-quarter earnings of $42 million, down from $68 million during the first quarter of 2002.