Entergy to slash 75 jobs at Indian Point

Entergy Corp. will lay off about 75 workers this year at its Indian Point nuclear power plant as part of a companywide cost-cutting that will eliminate about 800 jobs from Entergy’s 15,000–employee workforce.

The job cuts at the power plant in Buchanan amount to  about 7 percent of the Indian Point workforce, Entergy Nuclear spokesman Terry Young said today.

The company announcement followed a 52 percent decline in second-quarter operational earnings reported this week by Entergy.  Company officials told shareholders the steep decline was largely due to substantially higher income tax expense this year than in 2012.

“Difficult decisions like job reductions are sometimes the very tough outcome of making long-term fundamental improvements in the way a company works,” Entergy Chairman and CEO Leo Denault said in the recent earnings report.

At Indian Point, the layoffs will affect all departments except for operations and engineering. Reductions in those departments will occur through attrition, Young said.

He said jobs in some groups were added to help address critical needs while others were eliminated because they were not critical to daily operations.

“Our employees devoted thousands  of hours analyzing and discussing how to rebuild our nuclear organization while remaining squarely focused on safety, reliability and security,” Young said.

Entergy’s second-quarter earnings declined from $374.6 million in 2012 to $179.7 million this year.