The AAA call center on Worth Avenue in Hamden will be closing next month and 50 employees will be affected.
Officials from AAA Northeast said calls from members will be routed to Providence, Rhode Island as of Sept 14 and they will continue to dispatch the fleet and contract garages from the location in Hamden.
Employees who currently work in the Hamden location will be given top priority for any job openings throughout the company in the eight branches, insurance, travel and the driving school, according to AAA.
AAA said officials did not take the decision to close the call center lightly and job placement services, classes in resume writing and more will be offered.
Employees who are not moving to another location will receive severance packages.
When asked about the call center job losses Thursday, Gov. Dannel Malloy said he thinks the move has nothing to do with Connecticut's policies, as much as it has to do with changes to the way companies like AAA conduct business.
“Listen, I don’t know the intricacies of AAA’s needs. AAA does a bunch of businesses. One of which is the insurance business and I can tell you having a brother who’s in the insurance business, folks are doing a lot more online than ever before," he said during a news conference at New Haven's Union Station.
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The most recent jobs report from the Labor Department showed a Connecticut employment picture that is steadily improving. For the month of July 1,300 people found work, and that brought the figure of jobs created to date to 13,000. Over the past year more than 20,000 jobs have been created, which was a point that Malloy was quick to point out.
"People are coming back into the job market even faster than we’ve experienced in the past so I think on the overall side of that equation, it’s good news.”
Republican Leader Len Fasano in the Connecticut sent out a statement saying the jobs news hides how the state's growth lags behind nearby states. Fasano also focused on the 83 percent figure that represents how Connecticut hasn't yet recovered all lost jobs from the Great Recession in 2008. Even though 20,000 jobs have been created in the last year, to make up that 17 percent, more than 20,000 new jobs are still needed.
Fasano, said, "While I sincerely applaud the businesses that were able to rise above and grow jobs, we cannot ignore the fact that the unemployment rate today is higher than it was at the same time last year."
