Amtrak to close Riverside call center, eliminating 550 jobs

Amtrak said Wednesday it will close its Riverside reservation center in January, laying off all 550 employees.

The company announced the move in a message emailed to workers Nov. 14. Operations in Riverside will cease  Jan. 18.

In the message, Tim Griffin, Amtrak’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, said operations in Riverside would be consolidated with its reservation center in Philadelphia.

Griffin wrote that about 90 percent of Amtrak’s customers now book their travel online and that over the last five years, the number of calls received at contact centers has declined by close to 3 million calls. He wrote that “at our busiest time, only 25 percent of our agents are on the phone at the same time.”

Workers and union leaders who represent Amtrak employees, however, claim Amtrak has contracted with a third-party operator in Florida and are paying workers there less money. The minimum wage in Florida is $8.25. Griffin’s email does not mention the outsourced operation.

The memo did say Amtrak will sell the Riverside facility.

“We are committed to consolidating our real estate holdings, where it makes sense to do so,” Griffin’s email states. “From an operational efficiency and cash perspective, it is better to have many people at one location than smaller groups of people at multiple locations.

“When we divest facilities we own, like we will do with Riverside, we generate significant cash.”

Sal Rodriguez, president of Local 2511 of the Transportation and Communication Union which represents Amtrak workers in Riverside, said call center employees earn between $15 and $28 hourly.

Rodriguez said Amtrak is making it possible for some Riverside workers to relocate to Philadelphia, where operations will be expanded.

“They know people are not going to want to leave their homes and families in this area and move to Philadelphia,” he said.

Rodriguez added that he believes employees were misled this spring when told by the company that an outsourced operation would be created only to fill in when there was overflow work at existing call centers. “We thought that was just going to be to fill in the peaks and valleys,” he said.

An Amtrak spokesman told the Southern California News Group in June that the company was “seeking a business process outsourcer (BPO) to allow us to better meet variable service demands and lower our costs.”

“In general, Amtrak retains higher staffing levels to meet demand and our costs far exceed industry norms. Moving to an operation supplemented by a BPO will significantly improve our overall operation,” Marc Magliari, public relations spokesman for Amtrak Government Affairs & Corporate Communications, wrote in an email in June.

“No employee will be laid off as a result of outsourcing,” Magliari stated.

Dan Thomas, a retired Amtrak employee who worked at the call center for 18 years, said the company “is not being forthright.”  He said Amtrak claims it needs only one call center but is not mentioning the Florida operation because it’s not staffed by Amtrak employees.

“And the supervisors in Riverside went to Port St. Lucie, Fla., to train their replacements,” Thomas said. “I feel bad for those poor people out there.”

An Amtrak spokesperson reached by phone would not respond to questions.