LYNN HAVEN — Several hundred employees will be laid off from the General Dynamics call center in Lynn Haven in the coming week, according to a notice posted by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
General Dynamics opened the call center in October and notified the public of plans to lay off 726 employees in late February, as required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act.
Under the WARN Act, an employer must provide at least a 60-day notice in advance of mass layoffs to all affected workers, the appropriate unit of local government and the state dislocated worker unit.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) contracted General Dynamics to open the call center at the old Sallie Mae building last October, where about 1,500 employees were recruited to answer questions regarding enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
General Dynamics will continue operations in Lynn Haven with about 360 employees, who will help assist consumers with ACA Marketplace questions and support, according to CMS.
Because the ACA’s open enrollment period was limited, officials with CMS, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said many of the jobs at the Lynn Haven call center were seasonal in nature.
General Dynamics has been quiet about the layoffs since February, refusing an offer from local workforce organization CareerSource Gulf Coast to assist displaced workers with re-employment.
Maria Goodwin, director of workforce services for CareerSource Gulf Coast, said her organization received a stream of phone calls this week from those facing layoffs.
“Based on our phone calls, we believe their last day is today,” Goodwin said Friday. “Really they’re concerned on how they can file for unemployment and when they can file.”
Goodwin said that while CareerSource Gulf Coast hosted a series of job fairs to aid General Dynamics with hiring last year, the company was not interested in having a representative on-site to help employees facing layoffs.
“We were really involved when they were doing the recruiting and trying to hire people, but they’ve been really distant,” Goodwin said. “We haven’t really been involved since they announced the layoffs a couple of months ago.”
Goodwin said the organization also saw a stream of General Dynamics employees that quit following the layoff announcement, making them ineligible for state re-employment assistance.
Kim Bodine, executive director of CareerSource Gulf Coast, said that because the layoffs are occurring before the summer, there likely will be several businesses hiring in Panama City Beach.
“The good thing is that this is the time of year we have more jobs available, mostly in tourism,” Bodine said. “It’s not an exact crosswalk, although some of them can be.”
Bodine said many of the call center employees hold skills necessary for the many clerical and administrative positions in the hospitality industry.
“It’s never a good thing to lose 700 jobs,” Bodine said. “It’s not a perfect situation, but if it has to happen, I’m glad it happened during this time of year.”