Buena Vista employment office shuts
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| Workers from the Virginia Employment Commission office in Buena Vista will be transferred to Fishersville, officials say. (JANE LEE/ Rockbridge Report) |
The doors of the local Virginia Employment Commission office in Buena Vista closed for good on Wednesday afternoon.
The state Department of Labor decided last spring to shut down the VEC office because there wasn’t enough money to keep up with the increasing expenses of all of its offices. The Buena Vista office had the lowest traffic in the state, said Bruce Johannessen of VEC.
“It was one of those situations where it was planned and determined that we had to do something about closing some of the offices,” said Johannessen. “At the time it was decided that Buena Vista would be the one they closed.”
Johannessen also said that VEC has suffered from long-term budget problems and staff layoffs. But current staff members do not have to worry about unemployment. They will be transferred to the VEC office in Fishersville.
The Buena Vista office provided services including referrals, counseling and social services and job interview preparation. Now, residents will have to travel to the VEC offices in Fishersville, Roanoke or Covington to get face-to-face help.
More services are available through the VEC’s Internet site and call center. It looks like those services will be needed. Just last month, national unemployment jumped to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, with 10.1 million people looking for work.
Rockbridge County and the cities of Lexington and Buena Vista have fared only a little better. The Rockbridge area’s unemployment rate for August was 5.2 percent, but that was a full two points higher than for August 2007, when it was 3.2 percent.
Johannessen is still optimistic about the economy and employment options.
“We’re still a very healthy economy. There are pockets of unemployment throughout the state of Virginia,” Johannessen said. “You get down into far southwest Virginia or southside Virginia, then you have high unemployment rates, but you know in the rest of the state you’re relatively healthy.”
Office manager speaks about the closing
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