Major US-based airliner American Airlines has issued layoff warning notices to over 11,000 of its employees amid growing concerns in the country about persistently high jobless figures.
The notice was reportedly sent to the airliner’s ground crews, including its mechanics, while the company goes through a bankruptcy restructuring plan, the air career’s spokesman Bruce Hicks announced Tuesday.
Hicks, however, asserted that the company expects the actual job losses to be about 4,400, noting that fewer than 40 percent of the personnel receiving the layoff notice will be terminated.
American Airlines announced plans back in February to slash 14,000 positions, but in case the assertion by its spokesman turns out to be accurate, the eventual job losses would be nearly one-third of that figure.
According to the reports, the airliner has sent about 3,000 layoff notices to its employees in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas, where it plans to shut down a maintenance facility. An additional 3,000 American workers at an air base in Tulsa, Oklahoma also received the termination notes. The remaining notices were reportedly delivered to employees at airports in major cities, including Miami, New York, Newark, and Chicago.
Meanwhile, a leader of a pilots’ union has harshly criticized American Airlines, insisting that it is “paying lip service” to negotiating a contract while using the bankruptcy process to push for unfair cost-cutting concessions from pilots.
While pilots are reportedly holding a strike-authorization vote, the airliner says they are calling in sick more often than usual, causing more flight cancellations. The airline has reduced its September and October schedule by up to 2 percent to make sure it has enough pilots to fly its planes.
Presstv
