Monday, June 9, 2003 | 11 a.m.
Las Vegas-based United Airlines flight attendants, hoping to reverse a decision to close a base at McCarran International Airport, say the company's move is a bid to break up a strong center of senior employees and union activism,
Flight attendants, who also are seeking public support and help from lawmakers to persuade the company to reverse the decision to close the base in August, said the company's cost-savings estimates are inflated.
A spokesman for United said today the company is not making an estimate of cost savings public and said the company would save money be eliminating the administrative expense of running an office that requires both support staff and equipment.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., already has responded with a blistering letter to United Chairman Glenn Tilton expressing concern that he wasn't informed of the decision by the airline and reminding him of his influence on aviation-related matters before the Senate.
United announced last week that it would shut down the base in Las Vegas, forcing flight attendants who live in the area to relocate, face standby-flight commutes or leave the company. The company said last week that 222 people would be affected; flight attendants say the number is closer to 280.
The Elk Grove Township, Ill.-based airline, operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, said the move is a cost-cutting measure. The company gave local employees a three-month notice of its intent to close its domicile last week, saying the action would be effective Aug. 31.
About 65 members of the Association of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO, met Friday at the home of local President MaryAnne Houser to consider their options.
The flight attendants said the airline wouldn't save as much money as they're estimating.
The airline has not publicly announced how much it expects to save by closing the Las Vegas base, but Houser said she has been told by managers that the company could save $200,000 a year.
Flight attendants have compiled their own list of cost-saving measures as an alternative to closing the base.
"Las Vegas is the seventh-largest departure city in the United Airlines system and the 11th largest in the world," Houser said. "It simply doesn't make sense to close down this base."
Those rankings are based on the number of passengers boarded on United flights.
Houser said three years ago, United sent management to Las Vegas to observe the base because it operated so efficiently. Yet now, she said, the Las Vegas base and another in Philadelphia are scheduled to close in August. They are among the 13 bases nationwide and 19 worldwide that the airline maintains.
Employees attending the Friday meeting speculated that the closure is a ploy by the company to force flight attendants to quit so that replacements could be hired at lower rates. That, they said, is part of a strategy to develop a new low-cost airline that they said would have an important role in Las Vegas.
The flight attendants say they hope to garner public support to keep the base open since the loss of local jobs would hurt the area's economy. In addition to Reid's office, union officials contacted Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.
Don Wilson, an aide to Reid, attended Friday's meeting, but said he wasn't sure what the senator could do to help the flight attendants. He said he attended as an observer and would report back to Reid.
Reid sent a letter late Friday to Tilton voicing his concerns about the closure.
"I respect your freedom to make business decisions in the best interests of United Airlines," Reid's letter said. "However, I would have expected that our good working relationship would have prompted you to inform me of your plans for my constituents prior to finalizing the decision. The loss of these 280 jobs is a grave matter for the employees, their families and for the overall condition of the Las Vegas job market. I would have appreciated the courtesy of a phone call in advance of this move."
Reid also reminded Tilton of his past support for airline subsidies.
"Keeping a robust airline industry is essential to the economic health of the United States, nowhere more so than for my home state of Nevada, whose primary industry is tourism," the letter said. "My support has helped pave the way for direct subsidies, loan payments and most recently an airlines bailout package, all designed to ensure the well-being of your companies.
"At the same time, I feel a real responsibility to airline workers, who have been forced to bear a large share of the burden associated with the downturn of the airline industry," the letter said.
The United spokesman said the company would respond directly to the senator and not through the news media.
Flight attendants last month ratified a new agreement with United saving the company $314 million a year for six years as the company works with its union labor to find ways to cut costs and climb out of bankruptcy.
The flight-attendant base is operated from United's office at McCarran. Flight attendants get schedules and training information at the base and all their schedules originate and conclude at the base site.
Without the base, flight attendants would not be assured of ending their work days in their home cities and would have to commute home if space were available on flights.
Flight attendants also would probably lose special parking privileges at McCarran if the base were closed. Without the base, flight attendants who commute to and from their trip origination cities would have to pay between $6 and $10 a day to park their cars at the airport or in off-airport lots.
United is the third-largest commercial air carrier at McCarran with an average 31 flights a day to five markets. Flights to and from McCarran represent about 7.6 percent of the commercial market in Las Vegas.
United offers nonstop round-trip flights daily to and from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport. The airline has flown 826,915 passengers to and from Las Vegas in the first four months of 2003.
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