Two weeks after Bank of America announced it will raise its minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2021, its top executive in Maine is reporting a bump in applications for call-center jobs.
The bank, which has a current minimum wage of $15.30, said it will increase that rate to $17 as of May 1, 2019, and to $20 in 2021.
In Maine, Bank of America employs between 1,000 and 1,100 people statewide, more than half of whom work at its customer-service center in Belfast. It employs 250 in Portland, and has three so-called mini-call centers in South Portland, Westbrook and Brunswick. Fewer than 2% of employees work part-time.
Bill Williamson, BofA’s Maine market president, told Mainebiz on Thursday that the wage-increase move is already having a positive effect on interest in call-center jobs.
“We have a large number of people who’ve applied to those call-center jobs, and we’ve seen a spike recently,” he said. “We’re thinking it must have something to do with our announcement, though we haven’t gone out and documented that. All of a sudden we have many more candidates than we would typically expect.”
He said the company hires a new class of 20 to 30 people every month in Belfast and ideally would like to have another 100 on staff there, adding, “There’s demand for folks in Belfast on a constant basis.”
Bank of America, which is based in Charlotte, N.C., has 205,000 employees total.
Employee benefits and corporate culture
Williamson, who has led Bank of America in Maine since June 2012, emphasized that a competitive wage is one of many benefits the institution offers to employees. That includes 16 weeks of paid parental leave and health and insurance benefits,
“Employees earning less than $50,000 have seen no increase in their health care contributions since 2010,” he said.
“The way we’ve done that is essentially put the onus for increasing health care contribution costs on higher paid employees,” he added. “That’s something that Brian Moynihan implemented when he became CEO. Those of us fortunate enough to earn more than $50,000, we feel good about it, it’s a way of giving back to the people in a significant way.”
He also said he fully expects competitors such as JP Morgan to start raising their minimum wages in response to BofA but said, “Right now we’re out in front.” He also sees BofA’s culture of encouraging community engagement and commitment to employee wellness — financial, emotional and physical — as another selling point.
“As a result of that, we tend to hold onto people pretty effectively.”
