United to Increase Work Force by 1,700 : Airlines: The carrier says most of the hires will be for understaffed reservations centers.
United Airlines, turning against a layoff trend among its chief rivals, said Tuesday that it plans to add or recall about 1,700 workers nationwide by year’s end.
The nation’s largest airline needs more people, partly to staff its new United Shuttle short-haul service that starts in California and other Western states Oct. 1. But the new jobs will largely fill employment gaps throughout United’s system to help the carrier handle recent gains in passenger traffic.
Since it imposed a hiring freeze four years ago, United said, it has become understaffed from attrition and layoffs. The airline has 75,500 employees worldwide, down from a peak of 85,000 in 1993.
United, the primary unit of Chicago-based UAL Corp., said it did not have a geographic breakdown of its hiring plans. But it said about 1,200 of the jobs will be in its reservations centers, one of which is in Los Angeles. United also needs to add 140 pilots and 240 flight attendants and plans to recall 175 mechanics in San Francisco and Oakland.
United’s announcement is one of the few bullish developments in an otherwise grim employment situation in the airline industry.
“It’s always great news when an airline decides to hire people, particularly these days,” said Michael Boyd, president of Aviation Systems Research Corp., a consulting firm in Golden, Colo.
Several other carriers, such as Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, have slashed jobs recently to cut expenses, mainly to better compete with flourishing low-cost, low-price rivals such as Southwest Airlines.
Indeed, United’s Shuttle is aimed at helping the airline cut into Southwest’s strong presence in California. United launched plans for its short-haul service after receiving major labor concessions from its pilots and mechanics. They and other employees, except for the flight attendants, in turn acquired 55% of the company’s stock last month, making UAL the country’s biggest employee-owned concern.
But United signaled that it also was losing some customers because of service problems related to insufficient staffing.
While controlling costs is “still a priority, we can’t afford the loss of revenue that results when staffing shortages make it difficult for customers,” UAL Chairman Gerald Greenwald said in a statement.
Boyd said United’s reservations service in particular needs help. “If you like being on hold listening to elevator music, that’s the number to call,” he said.
United spokesman Joe Hopkins acknowledged that there is “a lot of pressure on our reservations offices all over the country. We’re trying to meet that demand by adding people.”
Some of the new pilots and flight attendants, meanwhile, will be needed to staff new aircraft United is receiving this year and next.
