The September 11th attack
Aloha Airlines offers plan to rehire 250 employees
By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer
Aloha Airlines is asking most of its employees to take two days off without pay each month as a way of bringing back the 250 workers the company furloughed last month.
Layoffs at Aloha and dozens of other Hawai'i tourism businesses since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have meant unemployment for more than 10,500 local workers. But Aloha may be the first company to revise its original approach to trimming payroll costs.
"It's kind of a second thought," said Stu Glauberman, an Aloha spokesman. "It's a response to employee feelings, sentiments and suggestions."
Aloha reduced its flight schedule by 26 percent and laid off about 8 percent of its 3,000-person work force when business dropped dramatically after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, which involved the hijackings of four commercial jets.
Scores of airline passengers canceled trips, and their fear has cut a wide swath through the tourism industry worldwide.
The layoffs were "the most rapid way to reduce costs," Glauberman said, and the cuts were allowable under the contracts the airline has with its employee unions. But after they were made, he said, several employees suggested that management "do more."
"I think the questions came up: 'Why are the layoffs at the union level? What is senior management doing?'" Glauberman said. Employees made several suggestions, including voluntary leave, he said.
Under the proposal, all but about 740 of Aloha's employees would be asked to give up two days worth of pay a month, Glauberman said. Those employees are contract service personnel who work with other airlines under agreements with Aloha.
Glenn Zander, Aloha's president and chief executive officer, presented the new plan to union leadership earlier this week, Glauberman said. The company would like to put it into effect by Nov. 1, but needs the approval of all its employee groups.
If all employees agree to the new plan, the payroll savings will equal those of the furloughs, Glauberman said.
If passenger traffic improves "considerably," Aloha could reduce the number of days without pay to one a month, Glauberman said. If Aloha's business returns to pre-crisis levels, the airline would return to its former staffing patterns, he said.
Conrad Waggener, chairman of the master executive council of Aloha's chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, said the union has sent a copy of the company's proposal to its 265 members. Zander is expected to talk to the pilots' group about the company's proposal on Thursday, Waggener said.
Waggener said yesterday that it was premature to discuss the proposal.
"We're going to try to get our group's feelings on it," he said.
Representatives of other unions representing Aloha employees could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Claude Matsumoto, vice president of negotiation services with the Hawaii Employers Council, said asking all employees to take some unpaid time off during hard times is a "common approach" for businesses.
Matsumoto said the council has discussed a number of so-called "work-sharing" arrangements with different unions in the Islands since Sept. 11. Some unions have been amenable and some have not, he said.
"The purpose of a work share is twofold," he said. "It keeps everybody on the payroll and also it helps minimize the disruption in services that laying off a certain segment of the work force may cause. The basic benefit is that it keep everybody employed even though they're all taking a little bit of a reduction."
Matsumoto said he could not quantify how many Island companies have turned to work-sharing to cut costs since the Sept. 11 attacks, which led to a sharp downturn in tourism that has rocked the state's already unsteady economy.
"I just know that a lot of employers have been affected, and they're all handling it a little bit differently, and there is a lot of reduction in hours occurring," he said. "I have no feel how much is work share versus layoffs."
Hawaiian Airlines, the state's other airline, worked with its unions to consider "a wide range" of ways to reduce payroll costs before announcing Sept. 28 that it would furlough 430 of its 3,524 employees at all levels of the company, spokesman Keoni Wagner said yesterday. Rather than considering work-sharing as another alternative, Hawaiian now is closely monitoring expenses, looking for other ways to cut costs and developing campaigns to woo travelers back to the skies, Wagner said.
"We're ... revving up the marketing effort to try to put more business back on the planes so we can hasten that date when we can increase our staffing again," he said. "So that's what our focus is right now."
Reach Susan Hooper at shooper@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8064.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said Aloha Airlines had asked workers to consider working two days a month without pay. The proposal is for workers to take off work for two days without pay. Also the name of Conrad Waggener, chairman of the master executive council of Aloha's chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, was misspelled.
