2,000 Western Airlines Workers Face Relocation
A large number of employees of Western Airlines--about 2,000 or more--will be required to move to Atlanta after the Los Angeles-based carrier merges with Delta Airlines on April 1, it was learned Monday.
The exact number will not be known for a while, according to Delta, and the moves will take place over several months.
Western employs 5,000 people in Los Angeles, and union officials maintain that as many as 3,000 of them will be offered expense-paid transfers to Atlanta, where Delta is headquartered. However, Delta said that figure sounds “much too high” and that 2,000 “would be in the ballpark.”
The employees were informed in a letter from Russell H. Heil, Delta’s senior vice president for personnel, that they will be offered the transfers. The letter, dated Feb. 13, told the workers that they will receive their new job assignments and be told their new rates of pay by March 2. Only after that will it be known how many workers will accept the offers. Delta officials declined to make public the letter’s text.
Employees not accepting Delta’s offer of positions in Atlanta will lose their jobs but will receive severance pay in amounts depending on their seniority.
Delta said that wherever a function at the Western facility in Los Angeles duplicates one of Delta’s in Atlanta, the departments will be merged.
“There never has been a secret that there would be moves to Atlanta,” said Delta spokesman William D. Berry. “From the day the merger was announced it was known that duplicated functions would be moved from Los Angeles.” But, he added, “all Western people are being offered jobs.” The merger of the two carriers was announced Sept. 9.
Specifically, Berry said, most of Western’s 500 non-union headquarters office workers in Los Angeles will be asked to move, as will a large number of the 1,400 maintenance workers. All maintenance work on the merged airline’s planes, except routine line maintenance, will be performed in Atlanta.
Thus, he said, only a small part of the maintenance force will be retained in Los Angeles. But departments such as the paint shop, machine shop, cleaning operations and the sheet metal shop will not be retained in Los Angeles. Also subject to transfer are the in-flight catering, flight controller and meteorology, consumer affairs and public relations departments.
There are 1,800 clerical workers, ticket counter clerks, reservations clerks and revenue accounting clerks at Western’s headquarters. Some of them will stay in Los Angeles.
Not affected by the transfers are the 500 pilots and 800 flight attendants based in Los Angeles.
Union Officials Angry
Delta’s only unions are the Air Line Pilots Assn. and a small in-house union representing flight dispatchers. But Western is more fully unionized and the impending transfers have angered some of the unions.
“We’re estimating that about 3,000 jobs will be transferred from Los Angeles,” said Ray Benning, president of Teamsters Union Local 2707 in Los Angeles, which represents Western’s mechanics.
Benning said the Teamsters had asked a federal court in Los Angeles to grant a temporary restraining order that would “enjoin (Delta) from integrating (Western’s) facilities until they sit down and merge the (two airlines’) seniority lists in a fair and equitable manner, as is called for in our contracts.”
Jobs Reclassified
The union leader said Delta “has no intent of integrating the seniority lists prior to the effective date of the merger.” During the last week, he said, Delta has reclassified 22 union members’ jobs at Western as management positions and intends to fill the slots with Western management personnel. “They intend to disrupt Western’s bargaining units,” he said.
Benning said Western’s labor contracts with the Teamsters include so-called “labor protective provisions” that guarantee jobs and income. However, “if Delta is successful in throwing out the contract like it’s attempting to do,” then individual employees “would have to hire their own attorneys and arbitrators to protect the provisions.”
“This whole thing,” Benning said, “has really been hell on (Western’s) employees and their families.”
There is no question that the moves will disrupt the lives of some veteran Western workers, and not all are sure whether they will accept a move to Atlanta.
Depends on the Job
Michael H. Gable has been a Western sheet metal mechanic in Los Angeles for 23 years. He will not make up his mind, he said in a telephone interview Monday, until Delta informs him next month what kind of a job he will offered in Atlanta and what his pay will be.
He has talked it over with his wife, who works as a postal clerk and would probably not have a difficult time transferring to the Georgia city. Their six grown children live in California, but Gable said he is leaning toward moving to Atlanta.
“Leaving the family would be hard,” he said, “but the nitty-gritty is that you have to make a living. I am 56--too young to retire but too old to get a job somewhere else.”
Loraine Parrish, a secretary in Western’s consumer affairs department, has been with Western for four years. Her husband is retired. She said she is impressed with how Delta “is bending over backwards for all Western employees, how their employees are coming down here to work out the merger.”
Leave the Grandchildren?
But she has four children and seven grandchildren living nearby. “That’s my toughie,” she said. “They are my pride and joy. But I can’t keep them forever.”
Those in Western management negotiated their transfers earlier. Chairman Gerald Grinstein is going to become vice chairman of Burlington Northern Inc. Not all the 15 vice presidents were offered the chance to move to Atlanta, and only four are remaining with Delta. Adam Aron, Western’s vice president for marketing programs, has already left to become vice president of Hyatt Hotel Corp. in Chicago.
Bruce Tonn, Western’s director of cargo sales, has agreed to a transfer and is scheduled to report for work in Atlanta on April 6. He said his wife and two children were against the move at first but now are looking forward to it.
“Of course, it is a big disruption anytime you have to move,” he said. “But I been with Western for 23 years and I am fortunate that in this business I have not had to move until now. I guess my time is here.”
Robert E. Dallos reported from New York and Greg Johnson from San Diego.
