Airlines Cut Work Hours in Savings Push After U.S. Payroll Aid
- Unions say move may run afoul of conditions to protect workers
- Carriers see reduced time as a way to preserve jobs longer
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Airlines are cutting some of their employees’ work hours less than a week after the U.S. government began disbursing $25 billion in payroll support.
Delta Air Lines Inc. and JetBlue Airways Corp. have pared the work schedules of thousands of employees, drawing the ire of a machinists union. United Airlines Holdings Inc. is in talks to reduce hours, prompting the union to warn of potential violations of the CARES Act, the government’s roughly $2 trillion rescue plan that includes airline aid designed to protect workers’ incomes and jobs.
The savings efforts point to the next phase of the airlines’ fight for survival amid the worst crisis in industry history, as the coronavirus pandemic all but erases travel demand. While the U.S. bailout package restricts cuts to employment and pay rates through Sept. 30, carriers are pulling all the levers they can to lower costs in the next five months -- and signaling deeper cuts in October.
“In an environment where demand for air travel is essentially zero, we have to work really hard to make that math work and stay in business,” said Josh Earnest, a spokesman for United.