PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Wednesday, March 18, 1998
Page: D01
Edition: SF

Section: BUSINESS




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CORESTATES JOB CUTS ON COURSE
WEEK BY WEEK, HUNDREDS LEARN THEIR FATE IN
PREPARATION FOR A TAKEOVER BY FIRST UNION.

By Joseph N. DiStefano, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Hundreds of CoreStates workers met with personnel officers yesterday to learn whether their positions would survive First Union Corp.'s pending takeover of the region's largest bank.

``Morale is pretty low. This whole corporation is in the grip of fear,'' said assistant vice president Karen Reynolds of Marlton, who was told her 27-person marketing department would be eliminated and the work transferred to First Union headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.

Week by week, CoreStates departments are being told their fate, even as the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulators continue to study the deal and its likely effect on the regional banking market.

While Philadelphia-area activists and lawyers are mobilizing a challenge to the merger on antitrust grounds, First Union president John Georgius and other bank officials are confident the deal will be approved, with few if any changes, before the end of April.

Among those to be displaced are half of the 600 people at CoreStates' three-year-old suburban office campus on Beaver Valley Road, near Route 202 just south of the Pennsylvania-Delaware state line, according to Reynolds and other employees there.

While declining to confirm any numbers, CoreStates spokesman Gary Brooten said workers from other CoreStates offices would be consolidated in Delaware even as existing jobs are cut. ``Some of the jobs are being eliminated. Some of the jobs are moving to other locations. Some are going to stay. And some jobs from elsewhere are being moved there,'' Brooten said.

Workers have been told that most customer-service and collections jobs at the site are expected to survive the merger, augmented by customer-service workers transferred from soon-to-be-closed sites in Pennsylvania, said assistant vice president David Haley of West Chester.

But jobs in security, credit, transaction processing, educational lending and other functions now at the site will be consolidated with First Union and CoreStates locations in North Carolina and elsewhere, Haley and others said.

The shakeup follows last week's notice that 200 of CoreStates' 280 personnel department jobs would be eliminated, and the previous week's revelation that 240 of its 300 residential mortgage positions would be transferred to North Carolina, northern New Jersey and other states, according to CoreStates employees in those departments.

Neither CoreStates nor First Union would comment on the number of jobs that will vanish from individual departments. First Union plans to eliminate 7,480 of CoreStates' 19,200 jobs, to be offset in part by 3,075 new positions in Philadelphia and 12 nearby counties, bank officials have said.

The bank has reserved more than $200 million for severance pay, and has set aside $16 million to retrain workers who will be laid off.

Reynolds and Haley both testified about the merger's likely effect on employees at last Friday's Federal Reserve hearing in Philadelphia.

Among the displaced CoreStates employees who have secured jobs with First Union is Rosie Saez, a 10-year CoreStates personnel department veteran who will head First Union's community reinvestment unit in the Philadelphia area.

Saez will replace Noreen Casey, the longtime head of CoreStates' respected community reinvestment unit.

In one of her first official duties in the new position, Saez is to meet with members of the Eastern Philadelphia Organizing Project at Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Roman Catholic Church in Kensington tonight to present the bank's plan for keeping branches open and loans flowing into nearby neighborhoods.

Despite the continuing job cuts, First Union spokesman Jeep Bryant said his company is proceeding ``full speed ahead'' with a new office complex in Allentown, which had been planned before the merger was announced last fall.

Philadelphia Mayor Rendell had tried for months to get the bank to choose his city over Wilmington and Allentown for those relatively low-paid customer-service jobs. Last week, he said he still hoped to get First Union to consider his city for back-office jobs.