United Airlines has issued a formal notice to state officials that the reeling air carrier intends to chop more than 6,000 jobs at San Francisco International Airport through temporary furloughs, dealing a fresh blow to a Bay Area region attempting to battle the economic effects of the coronavirus.
The air carrier said it intends to lay off 6,573 workers at the airport, according to an official notice filed with the state’s Employment Development Department — although the airline believes it will be able to reduce the total number of furloughs in the Bay Area and California.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on travel demand and on our business,” Kate Gebo, vice president of human resources and labor relations, wrote in a letter to the EDD.
United Airlines had warned in recent days that it might have to lay off 36,000 employees out of its workforce of 96,000 after fears and restrictions related to the coronavirus had chased off countless travelers.
The airline partly blamed the layoffs on federal, state and local government-ordered shutdowns and mandates.
“Governmental restrictions on travel, stay-at-home orders and the lack of a medical solution for the virus brought bookings and demand for travel to a near standstill,” Gebo wrote
In California, including the job cuts at San Francisco International Airport, United Airlines intends to lay off 8,400 workers.
The Bay Area furloughs are slated to occur by Oct. 1, the official WARN notice revealed.
Officials with United Airlines said the furloughs detailed in the notice should be viewed as a ceiling number and not the actual total for the employment losses.
“We expect to offset these numbers through increased participation in new and existing voluntary programs as well as continued discussions with our union partners about creative ways to help reduce furloughs,” said Annabelle Cottee, a senior manager for West Coast communications with United Airlines.
In Southern California, United Airlines is planning temporary layoffs of 1,634 workers at Los Angeles International Airport, 149 at San Diego International Airport, and 65 at John Wayne Airport in Orange County.
Among the other notable layoff plans revealed in the Bay Area: Andro’s Rostilj, a South Bay-based provider of meals for Bay Area companies, disclosed it had initiated temporary layoffs of 221 workers in Campbell.
Even with the United Airlines’ revelations of thousands of layoffs at San Francisco airport, the planned job cuts in the Bay Area for the first half of July are running slightly below the totals for the first half of April, May and June.
During the first two weeks of July, Bay Area employers warned the EDD that they were planning job cuts that totaled slightly over 13,000 positions.
The notices filed by companies do not provide a complete picture of the Bay Area’s employment situation. The filings give no information about hiring by companies and don’t detail all the job cuts in the region. The notices primarily serve to indicate the pace of job cuts in the area as well as sketch out details of local staffing reductions.
United Airlines hinted that some of the job cuts could become permanent — even though the notices for California and San Francisco airport officially list the job cuts as “temporary.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic” United Airlines stated in the WARN notice, “will result in us being a smaller airline.”
