Airline woes put strain on employees
By Barbara De Lollis and Dan Reed
USA Today
Sweeping layoffs since Sept. 11, 2001, have changed the lives not only of airline workers who lost their jobs, but also of those who remain.
More than 100,000 people — one in five employees — were laid off from the nine largest U.S. carriers in the past two years. Many of the 400,000 still on the job are working longer — and some say harder — for the same pay and benefits, or even less.
Morale has suffered. There's more optimism than six months ago, but many still fear further layoffs. Flight attendants say new schedules and duties leave them tired. Mechanics complain about deadlines. Pilots complain about fewer advancement opportunities.
The stress is growing. Pay and vacations have been cut. Benefit costs have increased. Some are shouldering new costs just to keep their jobs. Retirement plans have been shelved. Spouses have gone back to work. And some airline workers have gone back to school to start second careers.
Mechanic Pamela Steinke survived the layoffs at Northwest, but her 12 years of seniority weren't enough to keep her old job at the airline's Minneapolis/St. Paul hub, 65 miles from her home in Menomonie, Wis.
Now, she drives 330 miles each week to Chicago, where she rents a room and works on Northwest jets at O'Hare International Airport. Between gas and her room, Steinke, 59, is spending an extra $1,000 a month to keep her job. She wonders whether it's worth it.
Steinke, whose first airline employer, Eastern, collapsed in 1991, had planned to work until age 63. She loves her work but says "I don't know if I will last that long. After going through all this at Eastern ... I just don't know if I can deal with it."
Based on the most common measurements, employees at the major airlines are more productive today. Second-quarter employment at the nine largest carriers was down 23 percent from a peak of 509,754 in 2001's second quarter. But annualized revenue per employee was 1.5 percent higher at $179,093, says Ed Greenslet, publisher of The Airline Monitor.
"That says each employee is producing more, or working harder," Greenslet says. "From the revenue perspective, each employee is more productive. From the employees' perspective, they're working harder."
Another measure of worker output — available seat miles per employee — shows that productivity hit an all-time high in August, surpassing the previous peak in 1997, according to the Air Transport Association, the industry's chief trade group.
John Heimlich, the ATA's chief economist, says one of the biggest reasons is that payroll reductions have exceeded capacity cuts in percentage terms since the
Sept. 11 attacks. But the use of technology to replace customer service workers, the renegotiation of union work rules and the continued growth of Southwest, the nation's sixth-largest airline, also figure into productivity gains.
Southwest and Alaska, two low-cost carriers known for high labor productivity, are the only two carriers among the nine largest that have not laid off workers since the attacks.
But those gains have come at a price. "People are working harder, because their airlines' survival is at stake," Heimlich says.
Feeling the pain
The stress is affecting lives. Family, finances and relationships are being strained. Weariness — physical and emotional — is a constant companion.
US Airways Capt. Lonnie Robinson has given up 40 percent of his former pay since Sept. 11, and his pension plan was terminated by the airline in bankruptcy court. He dodged financial disaster by selling his real estate.
He's keeping his two children in private school for now, but when the family moved to Atlanta last month, Robinson picked a neighborhood with good public schools in case his situation changes.
Still, the pilot, 51, says he considers himself "fortunate." Some of his peers have "done a lot worse. Those are the heartbreakers."
Now, some experts ask if big job cuts and increased demands being put upon airline workers will backfire. Will consumers choose to stay home, travel less, travel by alternative means or use new communications technologies as travel substitutes because they perceive diminished levels of service?
Perry Ludy, author of "Profit Building: Cutting Costs Without Cutting People," says that when companies and industries downsize rapidly, the cuts often "aren't as strategic as they ought to be."
Revenue per employee might rise, he says, but the quality of the work often declines. Calls don't get answered quickly. Consumer interaction with employees isn't always pleasant. Operational problems don't get fixed. "The quality of work suffers," he says. "In that sense, they really aren't more productive."
Innovation lacking?
The problem, says workplace consultant Richard Chaifetz, is that rapidly downsizing companies typically are slow to innovate.
"Just asking people to do the same job with fewer people, that's not innovation," says Chaifetz, CEO of ComPsych, a Chicago-based provider of employee-assistance programs. "That's why carriers like Southwest and JetBlue are so successful. They have been innovative in the way they organize the work that has to be done.
"The others have been complacent, and not very innovative, and that's really at the heart of why they're in so much trouble," he says.
There is a glimmer of evidence that airlines are beginning to change their procedures and cultures in hopes that a move toward simplicity will lower their costs.
The ATA's Heimlich says employment levels will rebound some, but "I don't think we're going to roll all the way back to where we were."
Changes in demand, rising competition from the low-cost carriers and new customer-service technologies "have permanently altered the industry's employment equation."
Hess says she is encouraged by the cultural change taking place at United since her carrier entered bankruptcy-court protection in December.
She sees a new "willingness to work together" at a company notorious for its labor-management battles, executive infighting and bitter turf wars between employee groups.
"I think it will be a stronger, better airline once we emerge out of bankruptcy, because what you're forced to be is smarter about the way that you do business."
