American Airlines told employees this afternoon that they plan to send WARN Act notices to 13,000 team members on Friday. This starts a 60 day clock to furloughs. It doesn’t mean 13,000 people will lose their jobs in early April – it means that American plans to reduce its workforce again, and that up to 13,000 people could be laid off.
The actual number of jobs they shed will depend on calculations of how many employees they’ll need and how many employees they can convince to take voluntary leaves and exits, so that voluntary reductions replace involuntary job losses.
In any event, the number of employees at risk of furlough is lower than it was in the fall. American furloughed over 17,000 union employees in October and terminated about 1500 non-union workers.
American Airlines is planning to operate more flights this summer than they flew this past winter. They’re also trying to reduce the number of involuntary exits needed. However they’re offering only the same packages that many employees didn’t want before – for instance up to $150,000 in health reimbursements to employees with 10 or more years with the company who voluntarily separate is money in the future that isn’t guaranteed in the event of bankruptcy.
The airline hopes, of course, that the government will give them a third bailout and avoid layoffs (with the company pocketing about 90% of the money again, as they did with bailout two).
The full memo from American Airlines to employees follows.
Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2021 5:00 PM
To: Jetwire
Subject: Special Jetwire: A Message from Doug Parker and Robert Isom
| A message from Doug Parker and Robert Isom |
Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021 |
Fellow team members,
We are nearly five weeks into 2021, and unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation similar to much of 2020. As we closed out last year with the successful extension of the Payroll Support Program (PSP), we fully believed that we would be looking at a summer schedule where we’d fly all of our airplanes and need the full strength of our team. Regrettably, that is no longer the case. The vaccine is not being distributed as quickly as any of us believed, and new restrictions on international travel that require customers to have a negative COVID-19 test have dampened demand. We will fly at least 45% less in the first quarter compared to what we flew for the same period in 2019, and based on current demand outlook, we will not fly all of our aircraft this summer as planned. Consequently, like last fall, we will have more team members than the schedule requires after federal payroll support expires April 1. On Friday, we will begin issuing Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices covering approximately 13,000 team members. As a reminder, WARN notices may be required by law in advance of potential furloughs in certain locations, but it’s important to note that these notices do not necessarily equate to furloughs. Of course, this is not where we want to be, and we will work with union leadership to do everything we can to mitigate job impact as much as possible. First, you may have seen that our union partners are urging Congress for an extension of the PSP through Sept. 30 of this year. We are fully behind our union leaders’ efforts to fight for an extension and we will lend our time and energy to support this effort in every way we can. Our nation’s leaders understand the vital role airline workers play in keeping the country moving. They showed their support last year and we will encourage them to do the same again as the pandemic continues around the world. Secondly, on Friday we will open a voluntary early out program (VEOP) and a long-term voluntary leave of absence (VLOA) program for frontline, U.S.-based team members, excluding pilots. The benefits offered through these programs have not changed from last summer, but given where we are in our recovery, these programs may make more sense for some of our team members today than they did previously. Here’s a high-level overview of the programs, and you can find full details on Jetnet. The application window will open on Friday morning.
Obviously, issuing these required WARN notices isn’t a step we want to take. Tens of thousands of our colleagues have faced extreme uncertainty about their job security over the past 12 months, and that’s on top of the emotional stress all of our team has faced during an incredibly difficult year. Please know that we will get through this period and to more stable ground — that is certain. And, we will continue to fight in every way possible to get there as soon as we can. Until demand returns and we can provide permanent job stability, we owe you transparency. That is what we can offer today and what we will continue to provide. Thank you for all you continue to do for each other, our customers and our airline.
|
|
|
Jetwire is published by Global Engagement — email: [redacted]. |
|||
About Gary Leff
Comments
Comments are closed.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
You keep railing on AA for only using a portion of the CARES funding and hold Delta and SWA to a higher standard. But those carriers got the CARES money as well and kept it 100% for themselves. Your logic is nonsensical.
Frankly your posts just sound like an old man whining. Maybe find a hobby?
I thought this was always the plan. The CARES extension brought back furloughed employees but only for the duration of the extension. Unless traffic recovers they’ll be furloughed again, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like it will recover.
@nonsense – i objected to giving cares money to airlines period, and especially to airlines that weren’t even furloughing anyone. but you are 100% incorrect to say ‘SWA…got the CARES money as well and kept it 100% for themselves.” they were going to furlough employees for $500mm in annualized savings. PSP2 averted that, and Southwest promised as a result not to furlough anyone in 2021 – not just through March 31 as legally mandated.
Like UA, AA will spend billions of dollars of their current round of government handouts to fund these massive buyout packages – which is what they should have done months ago – and what DL and WN did with their cash. DL, by virtue of being a larger, more senior airline, got a lot more takers.
DL is now positioned to be a much lower cost airline even as demand ramps back up and as DL has gained a significant cost and revenue advantage.
When governments make arbitrary rules, the people suffer.
This entire pandemic response is an example of the rich, taking care of themselves, at the expense of the poor.
The rich work from home, and the poor delivery the packages to their door.
Guess which class happens to be in charge of all the rules?
It ain’t the poor…
@ George – I was born and raised in a country where the class that “did not go to the universities” (that’a a quote from a socialist revolutionary) “ruled” engineers, teachers, doctors and other “stinky intelligentsia”. The laborer made more money than a surgeon. That country was called the USSR. Do you know how that society ended by any chance? Cause I do…..
I for one am tired of American and Parker’s games he’s playing with employees in his attempt to suck more taxpayer money into his deep deep hole. The old saying about a boat is simply a hole in the water well what is AA?
Doug and the other execs are pocketing the $ from the PSP. It is absolutely absurd how much money they have received from the government. Doug, Robert, Derek and the rest of VP+ leftover from the US Airways days need to go. They have all grossly underperformed for years (even before Covid) and the BoD should have gotten rid of them long ago. They are the same guys that borrowed billions of $ in 2016-2017 to buy back shares of stock in the $40s because they thought it was “undervalued”. Ask them how much they lost on this and countless other projects. They spent close to a billion $ on a new headquarters/hospitality complex for goodness sake! Doug claims to care about employees, even created a personal LinkedIn and Instagram page to show how hard he is fighting for taxpayer money in DC. The guy is a complete fake and all he cares about is lining his own pockets. He has 2.5M shares of stock and if they file bankruptcy, the value of that goes to $0. If you have ever listened to him on CNBC or an Earnings call, you know what a blistering stumbling idiot he sounds like.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Looks like Doug Parker and team are trying to fool all of us again if he gets a third bailout.
Let them file bankruptcy and reorg. They have so much debt, it’s going to be nearly impossible to recover.
Does anyone understand with the CARES act why union employees are furloughed (subject to recall) and non union employees are terminated. I’m sure both qualify for unemployment benefits.
They don’t care how many lives they disrupt. AA is a piece of crap airline the should have been out years ago. But Doug, CEO of US Airways stated with AA and wanted that airline badly. Thats why USAirways bailed them out 7 years ago. No other airline had any intentions of touching them. And now, AA is in a spiral nose dive once again, thanks to poor upper management.. Couldn’t care less if they closed their doors tomorrow.
On line experts are worth the laugh!
I won’t be flying American!
@john C
Nope…. people are just looking to be outraged. These actions by AA are consistent with the expiration of the CARES 2 act’s mandate, Just as it was with the CARES 1 act in October. No one is “pocketing” anything beyond what the law was designed to ….. and AA is doing nothing immoral beyond what any other carrier is doing. At some point the bigger airlines will have to rationalize their workforce, these CARES acts are just bandaid after bandaid.
Nothin to see here.
Nope!!! Not one more tax payer dime to these airlines!!! How are airline employees more important than anyone else? Flight attendants can be trained in 2 days, TWA did this back in the 80’s! NO MORE pay for people sitting at home and doing nothing!! Time for PERMANENT CUTS!
What a piece of garbage you are! While United furloughs went more senior. AA managed to keep half of its Flight attendants. Look aroujd the world is crumbming and we need help. Tourism is dead and nost airlines will not survive after this and you spreading kies when we need the Cares extention. Wake up A hole
Blame china joe biden and the democrats for everything that is happening
@Trasha Garb “What a piece of garbage you are!” There’s a probably greater than 30% that you’re right on this.
Ok, so AA wants to be world class in customer service. That will be the day. We need to stop this lunacy of bailing out the airlines. Time for AA to restructure, right size, rid itself of inept leadership and listen to what its customers want.