http://pacific.bcentral.com/pacific/stories/2002/01/21/daily43.html
14:17 EST Wednesday Labor organization says airlines used Sept. 11 as an excuse for cutbacks
In the first sweeping count of post-Sept. 11 airline layoffs worldwide, the International Labor Organization says it counts as many as 400,000 jobs vanishing from the industry since then.
The report, written by Peter Turnbull of Cardiff University Business School in Britain, asserts that the terrorist events of Sept. 11 and their effects on passenger traffic may have been, in some cases, less the direct cause of layoffs than an opportunity for them.
"Airlines seem to be exploiting current difficulties to push through more radical cost cutting programs than is strictly warranted," said Professor Peter Turnbull of Cardiff University Business School. Turnbull says U.S. airlines were more aggressive in cutting jobs than European airlines were, and less likely to do advance consultation with their labor unions.
U.S. airlines say they have been responding to a combination of empty seats and the expenses they incurred earlier in the year when jet fuel was expensive. Traffic on the U.S. airlines fell far more sharply than was the case on European airlines.
United Airlines and American Airlines have each furloughed about 20,000 employees. Other major carriers have laid off 10,000 or more. Generally airlines in the United States cut about 10 percent of their employee rolls and made similar cutbacks to their route schedules, without much improving the percentage of available seats that were filled.
United, Northwest, Continental, Delta and American, which all fly regularly to Hawaii, have tended to make fewer cuts in their lucrative Hawaii routes than on the rest of their systems, and their flights to Hawaii run fuller than some routes on the mainland. Thousands of people fly to Hawaii from the U.S. mainland daily.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
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