DeWITT  — General Super Plating Company of DeWitt closed March 31, bookending a month that saw all 95 of its employees lose their jobs.

The job cuts began at the end of February and continued throughout March, according to Michael Rusinek, a staff representative with the IUE-CWA labor union, which represented all of the company’s factory workers (about 84 employees, according to Rusinek). By the time the doors of the plant, located at 5762 Celi Drive, closed on March 31, he says, just  one employee remained.

Proper notice of the job cuts in accordance with the state Department of Labor’s WARN Act was not given to the workers, Rusinek contends. The act requires that employees be given 60 days’ notice prior to cuts. The WARN notice for General Super Plating was dated April 20, nearly three weeks after the plant closed, and more than seven weeks after job cuts began on Feb. 27.

Rusinek also says that the employees did not receive the 401(k) funds, or vacation and personal pay that are owed them. He was scheduled to meet with representatives of American Industrial Acquisition Corp. (AIAC) of Greenwich, Connecticut on Thursday, May 7 to negotiate the receipt of those funds. AIAC is the venture-capital firm that purchased General Super Plating last year, according to Rusinek.

General Super Plating specialized in applying finishing coats to products made of plastics and other materials. The firm served the appliance, automotive, electrical, electronics, marine, medical, military, personal care, and plumbing industries, according to its website. The DeWitt plant encompassed 77,000 square feet.

General Super Plating was founded in 1932, and had been family-owned for decades, according to Rusinek, until it was sold to a different venture-capital firm a couple of years ago.

About six months after the first sale, says Rusinek, General Super Plating was sold again, this time to AIAC. Not long after, two of the company’s largest clients took their business elsewhere. Prior to those losses, says Rusinek, business at General Super Plating had been steady.

Representatives of General Super Plating and AIAC could not be reached for comment by press time.        

First Niagara Financial Group (NASDAQ: FNFG), parent of First Niagara Bank, grew commercial loans by nearly $30 million and added $20 million in commercial deposits in its Central New York market in the first quarter, Gregory Norwood, CFO, tells CNYBJ.

“That market for us had a very good quarter,” Norwood says. “It really shows what market opportunities are there.”

Buffalo–based First Niagara on April 24 reported net income of $43.8 million, or 12 cents a share in the first quarter, down from $52.7 million, or 15 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Excluding certain non-operating restructuring expenses incurred in the first quarter, First Niagara produced operating net income of 

$54.7 million, or 15 cents a share, compared to $61 million, or 17 cents, in the year-ago quarter.

First Niagara has been focused on cutting expenses in the last year or so.

Total operating expenses declined 2 percent in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. Salary and benefit expenses also fell 5 percent from the year-ago quarter, driven by a 7 percent decline in the number of employees.

The banking company closed 17 branches in the first quarter of 2015, spread across its four-state geographic footprint, and has also reduced management layers and simplified its organizational structure, according to Norwood.

“Banks typically have more management layers than many other commercial companies. That’s one of the things we were focused on [reducing],” he says. 

First Niagara is a multi-state, community-oriented bank with about 390 branches, $39 billion in assets, $28 billion in deposits, and about 5,300 employees across New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. 

First Niagara Bank ranked fourth in deposit market share in the 16-county Central New York market, according to June 30, 2014, FDIC statistics, the latest available. The bank had $2.2 million in deposits, good for an 8.4 percent share of the CNY market’s total deposits.