The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston plans to hasten the closing of its check processing office in Windsor Locks and will hold an informational meeting about the closing in August, First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Paul M. Connolly has announced.
The Boston Fed had said last summer that the closing was planned for the first quarter of 2009. But the Fed has moved the date to Sept. 19, according to a filing with the state Labor Department, known as a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice for short.
In that filing, the Fed said the remaining 94 workers at the center — which just a year ago employed 136 — will be laid off when the operation closes in September. The center is located at 317 Ella Grasso Turnpike, near Bradley International Airport.
Fewer Checks
In an announcement of the speedup sent to banks still using the center, Connolly also said there will be “town hall meetings” in Boston and Enfield sometime in August to field questions about the closing.
The Fed announced the phasing out of the Windsor Locks center last June, citing as reasons the dwindling use of traditional paper checks and the shift toward electronic processing of check-based transactions.
In his latest letter to area banks, Connolly said that the move of check processing from Windsor Locks to Philadelphia and the stepping up of electronic processing will be a benefit overall.
The August public information meetings, including the one in Enfield, “will provide opportunities for us to share the latest information and discuss the transition,” he said.
In the initial 2007 closing announcement, Boston Fed Vice President Thomas Lavelle said the laid-off workers would be offered unspecified separation packages, extended medical insurance coverage, and “career transition assistance.”
The Windsor Locks facility is one of 14 Fed check-cashing operations and Fed bank branches with a total of 1,740 jobs being lost in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington.
