The (artificially high?) price of gas has begun to effect the transportation industry. First the truckers, always on the front lines when it comes to that, had to raise their charges for hauling, which in turn raised the cost of everything they hauled, which in turn sparked a sudden rise in the inflation rate that took economists (if not normal people) by surprise.
But this won't come as any surprise: the high cost of fuel is starting to force cutbacks in airline personnel.
UAL Corp.'s United Airlines plans to cut 1,550 flight attendant jobs, Bloomberg News and Crain's Chicago Business reported Wednesday.
In a notice to the flight attendants' union, United said it's offering voluntary furloughs of six to 21 months starting Oct. 31 and hasn't announced layoffs.
"As we reduce the size of our fleet and take actions to enable United to compete in an environment of record fuel prices, we must take the difficult, but necessary step to reduce the number of people we have to run our operation," United said in a prepared statement.
"Today," the carrier continued, "we notified our flight attendants about potential involuntary furloughs. We have worked with (the flight attendant union) to develop a voluntary package and if we receive enough volunteers like we previously have, these involuntary furloughs will not be necessary."
The union understood what they were up against and the company worked with them to come up with a plan that would do as little damage to its members as possible during the gas crisis. That's the way it should be, and we applaud them both (something we've rarely been able to do these past 8 years.
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