They gathered at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Tuesday afternoon and marched outside the American Airlines and American Eagle departure gate of Terminal D, where they waved protest signs.
“It's Valentine's Day and it's like, 'AA, we don't feel your love,'” said Robert Holmes, an American Airlines employee.
Fort Worth-based AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines and American Eagle, filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 29 of last year. As a move to cut costs, American Airlines on Feb. 1 outlined a business plan to improve profit to more than $3 billion by 2017.
American Airlines announced plans to cut approximately 13,000 employee positions, including ground service workers, mechanics, flight attendants and pilots. American Airlines also plans to reduce an average of $1.25 billion in annual costs across all of its work groups.
Roughly 1,200 employees are anticipated to lose their jobs with the closure of the Fort Worth Alliance Airport maintenance base, as the airlines plans to outsource 40 percent of its aircraft maintenance work.
Holmes, who has worked for 12 years as an American Airlines aircraft maintenance technician there, said he had planned to retire from American Airlines, but the recent announcement has him worried about his future.
“Out of all the maintenance bases, we are the highest performing one out there,” Holmes said. “And there is no reason to cut us. And basically, they are sending these jobs overseas to non-FAA regulated repair stations.”
Miami resident William McGill has worked for 24 years as an American Airlines fleet service clerk based in the DFW area.
“We make that decision early on in our careers when we chose a company to work with—we chose American Airlines because of the reputation, the prestige and the benefits, which is what every average American looks for is the benefits so we can retire comfortably at a reasonable age,” McGill said. “And American has pretty much taken that away from everybody. So if we allow this to happen, the question is, 'What next?'”
American Airlines also plans to eliminate its employees' defined benefit pensions and has proposed to instead contribute matching payments in 401k-style pensions—a decision that requires approval from a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
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