Airlines Laying Off and ./ or restructuring

[Malcolm]

 

American Airlines Lays Off Hundreds of Employees Amid Customer Service Restructuring

American Airlines Airbus A319.© Boarding1Now/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus

American Airlines just announced an upcoming organizational shift, aimed at refining its customer service approach, which will result in the layoff of hundreds of employees. On Monday, the major U.S. carrier revealed plans to lay off 656 employees, equivalent to 8.2 percent of its 8,000 customer service-related roles.

 

"Today, we announced updates to our contact center organization that will help us better serve our customers. As part of these updates, we are creating a new Customer Success team that will be dedicated to providing more convenient, elevated support to American Airlines customers with some of their most complex travel needs," the airline told USA Today in a statement.

"Unfortunately, this means some current positions will be eliminated. We’re working closely with impacted team members to support them through this transition including providing exclusive access to job openings throughout American Airlines, outplacement services and severance."

According to reports, the affected employees are non-unionized workers located in Phoenix (335) and Dallas-Fort Worth (321). Currently, their primary functions consist of assisting AAdvantage loyalty program customers and helping passengers with lost luggage complaints.

 

Carolyne Truelove, American Airlines Vice President of Reservations and Service Recovery, told Dallas News, "We are laser-focused on improving your customer experience," adding, "With that focus is digging deep into where we have customer pain points."

As things stand, passengers need to reach out to separate American Airlines customer service teams to address their various issues. But, the new structure will consolidate customer assistance employees into a single team, which will most likely work to support passengers facing such challenges as flight disruptions due to weather conditions.

To handle less complex issues—what it called "lighter-touch" problems—American Airlines plans to outsource customer support services to international contact centers that operate 24/7. This strategic move is expected to reduce call volume by 20 percent, allowing the airline to address customer needs more efficiently.

 

Those who are being laid off will continue working in their current roles until March 30, and are being given first crack at applying for one of the 135 openings on the new Customer Success team. Alternatively, they can explore other available positions among the 800 other job openings within American Airlines. Otherwise, laid-off employees will receive severance packages and job placement support to ease their transitions.

[conehead]

4 hours ago, Malcolm said:

To handle less complex issues—what it called "lighter-touch" problems—American Airlines plans to outsource customer support services to international contact centers

Outsourcing your Customer Service… yeah, that’s gonna work well..

[Maverick]

6 minutes ago, conehead said:

Outsourcing your Customer Service… yeah, that’s gonna work well..

Yup. Ask WestJet

 

[Kip Powick]

Must be a new set of "bean-counters" in AA 

[Vsplat]

I have yet to see outsourcing to an 'international' call center work.  Invariably it is the same script, read by an individual with very poor language skills over an even worse comm line with loud call center noise behind them.  I have even had it where the call center agent kept thanking me for being a loyal customer of a different business, so it made me wonder if they even know whose customers they are handling.

Given how much emotion is often present when a passenger with a problem starts their interaction with a customer service agent, this seems to be a formula for rage.

Vs

Edited February 3 by Vsplat

[conehead]

11 hours ago, Maverick said:

Yup. Ask WestJet

 

Are you being sarcastic, or did it actually work for WestJet? I know it didn't work very well for Air Canada when they outsourced some of this work to India... I remember calling about some lost luggage, and the agent barely spoke English.

[Seeker]

25 minutes ago, conehead said:

I know it didn't work very well for Air Canada when they outsourced some of this work to India... I remember calling about some lost luggage, and the agent barely spoke English.

It doesn't actually work for any company that does this.  Long wait times and difficulty in communicating has the effect of making most people think it's not worth the effort and they give up - a "win" for the company.  A win in the short term and whatever manager brought it online gets his/her bonus and moves on.  A few years later some other manager gets hired to restore and rebuild customer loyalty - gets their bonus and moves on.  Am I bitter?  Ask me.

I'm old enough to have seen the same cycle, in various forms, many, many times.  Cut staffing to reduce costs then boost staffing to deal with delays and IRROPS, then cut staffing to reduce costs........

[Falken]

conehead - that agent now calls me to inform me I can get 0% interest on my Chase credit card!

[Maverick]

On 2/3/2024 at 6:39 AM, conehead said:

Are you being sarcastic, or did it actually work for WestJet? I know it didn't work very well for Air Canada when they outsourced some of this work to India... I remember calling about some lost luggage, and the agent barely spoke English.

I'm being sarcastic. At the smaller bases that are all contract it's not even close to being what it was.

[J.O.]

The culture isn't much better at large bases either. It had started already, but the days of the Three Musketeers (all for one and one for all) mindset went the way of the dinosaur when Onex took over. It's a shame.

[Seeker]

2 hours ago, J.O. said:

The culture isn't much better at large bases either. It had started already, but the days of the Three Musketeers (all for one and one for all) mindset went the way of the dinosaur when Onex took over. It's a shame.

It's a shame but was totally predictable.  Even if Onex hadn't taken over the trajectory would have been similar.  The growth that fueled the "machine" could not be sustained forever and eventually the company would have to deal with normal business constraints. 

I got a kick out of Westjetters (some of whom where friends and co-workers from previous companies) exuberantly telling me their world-domination plans. 

[Malcolm]

fake news or real?

 

 

American Airlines Issues ‘Poverty Verification Letters’ To Some Flight Attendants

Story by Rich Thomaselli

 

 

Being a flight attendant can be glamorous, but not when you open the paycheck.

That’s why American Airlines is issuing a ‘poverty verification letter’ to some new hires who work in large cities with high costs of living.

Some flight attendants make only $27,000 a year before taxes. Despite helping passengers find their seats and greeting them when they enter, they are only considered on the clock once the cabin doors are shut.

 

It is printed on official American Airlines stationary and is used to help flight attendants in high-profile cities such as New York and Miami. The letter reads, “The projected annual salary is $27,315 per year before incentives and taxes...Any courtesy you can provide would be appreciated.”

Many flight attendants utilize ‘crash pads’ with multiple roommates to keep rent cost down, and also are able to qualify for food stamps. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) is even urging American Airlines to provide free meals to flight attendants in domestic cities.

The carrier already provides free meals on international and long-haul flights.

American Airlines flight attendants have also not received a pay raise in almost five years. They have repeatedly voted in favor of going on strike, but federal rules currently prohibit them from doing so.

 

 

[Malcolm]

As Strike Threats Heat Up, American Airlines Surprisingly Closer To Deal With Flight Attendants

by Gary Leff on April 29, 2024

After Thursday’s tense showdown between American Airlines CEO Robert Isom and the head of the airline’s flight attendant’s union, it may seem like the parties are farther apart than ever.

 

The union is asking the federal National Mediation Board for the right to strike. Negotiations have dragged on for years, and the labor head dropped her mic and headed off after reading Robert Isom the riot act in an employee meeting following the airline’s first quarter earnings call.

However read between the lines and it looks like a labor agreement is closer than ever, and a strike is unlikely. American is increasing its offer to the flight attendants. The union’s leadership has more room to maneuver, and has changed the rhetoric around what it is asking for – to get closer to what the airline could offer. While the parties could still mess this up, a deal is finally within reach.

And we haven’t been there before! American wants to pay at the top end of what other airlines pay. They’re not as profitable as their largest competitors, either. Yet American Airlines flight attendants had been demanding up to 50% raises and their union’s leadership couldn’t walk back the rhetoric. They wrote to members, “One area we are holding firm on is wages.” That’s why talk has been about a strike.

I’ve been writing for 18 months that:

• In order to come to a deal, union officers first had to get re-elected. If they agreed to move off of their demands before the officer election, they wouldn’t get re-elected since they’d appear weak. Re-election has happened.

   

   

• To get a better deal from the company, they needed to wait for another flight attendant work group to negotiate something better. Southwest Airlines got a better deal. Non-union Delta gave their flight attendants (and other non-union employees) a raise.

Flight Attendant Union Leaders Confront CEO Robert Isom At Employee Meeting, October 2023

This allows both parties to move. American is clear that they’ll match Delta pay rates. They’re offering the first flight attendant union contract ever that will include boarding pay (matching non-union Delta). Sara Nelson’s AFA-CWA has agreed to forego boarding pay even after Delta introduced it two years ago.

And it does seem that the parties are moving.

 

• American says it’s increasing its economyic offer, in light of Delta’s increase in wages. They said that during the airline’s earnings call and again in the employee meeting that followed.

   

  They don’t want to bargain against Southwest’s contract. What that mostly means is they don’t want to make bonus payouts for ‘retro pay’ (all of the wage increases flight attendants would have gotten, back to 2019, for the time they’ve been without a new contract).

   

• The union says they want to bargain against the Southwest contract but that means they’re now looking at competitor contracts as a benchmark and have come off of pie in the sky asks like 50% raises (later reduced to 40% increases). They haven’t told their members they’ve reduced their demands, but their rhetoric has changed about what those demands are.

One of my favorite (apocryphal) Winston Churchill stories involves Churchill asking a British socialite if she’d sleep with him for a million pounds sterling? She agrees. Then he asks if she’d consider it for 50 pence? She’s appalled: “What kind of woman do you think I am?” Churchill replies, “We’ve already established that madam, now we’re just haggling over price.”

It seems we’ve finally reached a point where the parties are within a zone of possible agreement – and they’re haggling over price. Will it be Delta wages, or Delta wages plus 1%? American probably has to do some retro pay – not Southwest full retro pay and not zero.

The Straussian read of the conflict between American Airlines CEO Robert Isom and Flight attendants union head Julie Hedrick is that the two are closer to rapprochement than they’ve ever been. The fireworks were for the members.

A strike is getting tougher to do now, with American increasing its offer (suggests there’s no deadlock in negotiations) and with the election getting closer (since the President’s appointees are the majority of the mediation board, and a strike would be unpopular with voters). If the economy worsens, getting the current offer on the table becomes harder. Flight attendants can’t afford to go without pay from a strike, which is why the union has been talking about at most doing more limited job actions if released by the government anyway.

Even under current offer terms American’s flight attendants will see meaningful wage gains of about 25%, which is huge for the first and second years that are today eligible for food stamps. And the company will avoid a strike, while retaining flight attendant wage costs similar to those of their largest competitors.

Delta flight attendants will still be better off, though, because while American cabin crew will get a contract that offers the same profit sharing formula, American doesn’t earn as much profit – and has more employees to share the profit pool across.