Name: United Airlines, big SFO employer, may lay off 36,000 workers
Brand: sfchronicle.com
SKU: sfchronicle-com-30
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

United Airlines, big SFO employer, may lay off 36,000 workers

preview

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateUnited Airlines could furlough 36,000 employees — up to 40% of its workforce — in October, the company announced in a memo to employees Wednesday.The company may furlough more than 15,000 flight attendants, 11,000 airport operations workers, more than 5,000 technical operations staff and thousands of others in a range of departments from catering to customer service.The Chicago airline employed about 13,400 workers in the San Francisco area before the pandemic began — about 14% of the airline’s workforce. United Airlines is the largest carrier at San Francisco International Airport, operating about 290 flights daily from SFO before the pandemic began. The airport closed down one wing of its international terminal in April after the coronavirus pandemic caused demand for international flights to crater.A representative for the company could not provide an estimate of the number of potential employees to be furloughed in the Bay Area.The company cannot furlough workers before Oct. 1 because of restrictions on the $5 billion in aid the company received under the federal CARES Act.“The reality is that United simply cannot continue at our current payroll level past Oct. 1 in an environment where travel demand is so depressed,” company representatives said in a memo to workers. The airline expects its flight capacity in July to be a quarter of what it was last year; in August, it will be down by roughly two-thirds.Coronavirus Coverage“It’s increasingly likely that travel demand will not return to normal until there is a widely available treatment or vaccine,” airline representatives said in the memo.The exact number of furloughs will depend on the number of workers who participate in voluntary leave and reduced-hour programs, as well as agreements reached with unions. More than 20,000 employees are already participating in unpaid voluntary leave-of-absences, according to the memo.Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes“The United Airlines projected furlough numbers are a gut punch, but they are also the most honest assessment we’ve seen on the state of the industry,” Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union that represents 50,000 workers, said in a statement.“Congress must extend the (Payroll Support Program) in order to avoid hundreds of thousands of layoffs from an industry that normally drives economic activity for every other sector and supports more than 11 million jobs,” she said.Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the groups prospectively affected by United’s layoffs. They include more than 5,000 technical operations staff.Anna Kramer is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateUnited Airlines could furlough 36,000 employees — up to 40% of its workforce — in October, the company announced in a memo to employees Wednesday.The company may furlough more than 15,000 flight attendants, 11,000 airport operations workers, more than 5,000 technical operations staff and thousands of others in a range of departments from catering to customer service.The Chicago airline employed about 13,400 workers in the San Francisco area before the pandemic began — about 14% of the airline’s workforce. United Airlines is the...

public

Anna Kramer

Delivering the Bay Area’s best journalism every day. Subscribe and support the newsroom: http://SFChronicle.com/subscribe

sfchronicle.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

United Airlines, big SFO employer, may lay off 36,000 workers

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS