"LAX tries to minimize layoffs"

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

LAX tries to minimize layoffs
The Los Angeles (CA) Daily News


LOS ANGELES -- About 12,000 workers at Los Angeles International Airport
face losing their jobs in coming days because of the airline slowdown
since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said Tuesday.

At a meeting of the Los Angeles World Airports Commission, labor union
representatives expressed concern that about 25 percent of the total
airport work force could be laid off.

The commission ordered staff members to come back next week with plans
to fully reopen the airport and mitigate the losses.

The city is losing some $1.8 million daily from the slowdown, including
$800,000 being spent on beefed-up security measures at Los Angeles
airports, said LAX spokeswoman Gail Gaddi.

The expected layoffs would affect everyone from concession workers,
skycaps and parking lot attendants to baggage handlers and flight crews
as a result of the national slowdown in flights, said commission
spokesman Paul Haney.

"We can't even begin to speculate as to when flights might return to
previous levels," he said.

More than 40,000 airport-related employees who currently work at the
airport are bracing for the impact of a drastic reduction in flights and
vehicle access to LAX.

At Ontario International Airport, which is run by L.A. World Airports,
there have been no layoffs of any of the 6,000 people employed in
airport-connected jobs, said airport spokesman Dennis Watson, but the
airlines are losing money with flights less than 45 percent full, on
average.

Since the Sept. 11 attack, airlines have cut half the daily flights
taking off or landing at LAX, and many of the planes that are flying are
only 20 percent full, according to airport authorities.

Before the attack, there was an average of 56,000 daily flights
nationwide. The average flight operated with planes about 75 percent
full.

On Tuesday, the commission passed a resolution to have its staff report
back Oct. 2 with a plan to fully reopen the airport to traffic and set
up a task force to meet with airport companies to find ways to avoid
layoffs.

Labor unions and other groups representing airport workers attended the
commission meeting to voice frustration over the layoffs.

"We're urging the commission to minimize the loss of jobs by considering
the impact on jobs when they devise a plan to reopen the airport and the
parking lots," said Maria Loya, a director at the Los Angeles Alliance
for a New Economy, a nonprofit government watchdog group.

While a slowdown in flights would make some layoffs inevitable, she
said, some steps could be taken to lessen the impact.

Parking lots have already reopened at airports such as Boston's Logan,
New York's JFK, and and Chicago's O'Hare, and if lots reopened at LAX,
it could save hundreds of jobs.

Also, she said, reopening lots could encourage more people to fly by
eliminating the inconvenience of long-distance shuttle parking.

Airline employees nationwide have been hit hard by the slowdown, with
more than 75,000 being laid off in the past two weeks, and more layoffs
expected.

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