Kaiser Aluminum is cutting back again at its Bellwood plant in Chesterfield County, eliminating 56 of about 125 jobs and closing the plant temporarily in July. The temporary shutdown of the facility, which produces drive shaft tubes for automotive customers and seamless tubes for service centers, comes in response to planned shutdowns in the automotive industry, a Kaiser spokesman said.

Two area employers are cutting 327 jobs in the Richmond area. Capital One Financial Corp., one of the largest employers here, is eliminating 66 jobs in its U.S. credit-card customer operations at its offices in Goochland County. The cuts mark the third round of layoffs this year for the McLean-based credit-card and financial-services company, for a total of 143 local job reductions this year.

A former Qimonda employee has filed a class-action lawsuit in Delaware on behalf of more than 2,000 employees who were laid off. The suit seeks $40 million in damages. Lakita Blair, who worked at Qimonda’s plant in eastern Henrico County, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Delaware against Infineon Technologies AG, Infineon Technologies North America Corp. and Qimonda AG.

The nearly 600 jobs slashed nationwide by Clear Channel Communications Inc. has affected the Richmond market. Three full-time employees, including Sid Kelly, part of the “Melissa & Sid” morning show on WRVQ (94.5-FM), and three part-time on-air personalities for the station were dismissed in Tuesday’s cutbacks. Kelly started at Q94 in September 2006.

A Roanoke Valley welding operation will close, putting 115 people out of jobs. A spokeswoman for Alabama-based O’Neal Steel Inc. said yesterday that its Botetourt County plant will close. The plant supplies goods to the Roanoke railcar factory of FreightCar America. FreightCar America said last week that it would suspend operations until the railcar market strengthens, putting 210 people out of work.

One day after issuing a lackluster quarterly earnings statement, Capital One Financial Corp. told 58 employees, including 42 at the company’s West Creek campus in Goochland County, that their jobs would be cut.

Capital One Financial Corp. told about 60 employees today that their jobs were being cut. The layoffs hit the U.S. Card division, which is responsible for managing credit card acquisitions, services and accounts,—and affect about 40 employees in the Richmond area. The remaining cuts will be at the company’s headquarters in McLean, spokeswoman Julie Rakes said.

When the morning “bye, honey” hug has the wife heading out to work and the husband staying at home because he’s been laid off, the gap in pay between women and men becomes a family issue. If the wife had been laid off instead, the family income likely would have taken a smaller hit, because women in the U.S. still earn only 78 cents for every dollar that men earn. In Virginia, women average 77 percent of what men earn.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. is cutting jobs in its sales work force as it combines operations with its new parent company, Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc. The job cuts will affect 16 employees in Virginia, including three at a regional sales office in Richmond, Altria spokesman David Sylvia said yesterday. Altria bought U.S. Smokeless’ parent, UST Inc., in January for $10.4 billion, plus $1.3 billion in assumed debt. U.S. Smokeless is now a subsidiary of Altria, along with cigarette maker Philip Morris USA and cigar maker John Middleton Inc.

International Paper will close its lumber mill in Franklin at the end of next month, idling 123 workers, because of the continuing downturn in the homebuilding industry, the company announced yesterday. IP also will cut a total of 35 jobs by summer from two of its other Franklin operations, a sheet converting plant and a converting innovation center, in response to shrinking orders from customers, said Desmond Stills, a company spokesman in Franklin.

The VCU Health System will lay off about 30 people—far fewer than the 300 earlier predicted who might lose jobs in a worst-case scenario. “We’ve been defensively successful in reducing that number down to fewer than 30 positions that will actually be affected by layoffs,“ said John Duval, chief executive officer for MCV Hospitals, “If you are one of those individuals, it’s hardly good news. But it’s certainly a testimony to the staff who have worked hard to reduce our costs to get it down to that number,“ Duval said.

Editor’s note: In a December Commentary section, Buddy Childress, executive director of Needle’s Eye Ministries in Richmond, wrote about the spiritual aspects of economic trouble. As the difficulties continue, and in some cases deepen, he offers more thoughts about values and money—and how they overlap and differ.

The Martin Agency laid off 24 employees yesterday after the spending projections by clients indicated the agency was overstaffed for the workload. The cuts represents 5 percent of the work force.

Henrico County has been the epicenter of an economic quake that has dropped an estimated 10,000 private-sector jobs from the Richmond region in a little more than a year. The county is losing more than $7 million in direct annual-tax revenue from five major corporations that are shutting down or cutting back their operations—led by the impending closure of the Qimonda computer-chip factory in eastern Henrico.

With Virginia’s budget ax falling heavily on the state Transportation Department, the agency will lay off 450 part-time workers across the state next month and nearly 1,000 full-time employees during the next 18 months.