American Airlines on filed notice with state officials that it could lay off 63 cargo agents at Miami International Airport.
The employee cuts would take effect on or around Oct. 19, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice dated July 20.
The proposed job cuts are part of the airline's attempts to slash costs under Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
American and its parent company AMR Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors in November.
The airline has since been renegotiating labor contracts to reduce costs across all its employee groups by 20 percent.
"As part of the restructuring changes, American will be outsourcing all cargo agent functions and some airport services agent functions," spokeswoman Martha Pantin said. "Our affected people had an opportunity to sign up for an early-out voluntary separation program, and though those options have not been awarded yet, it was necessary to forecast staffing reductions and issue WARN notices."
Earlier this year American officials said labor reductions would result in annual employee-related savings of $1.25 billion from 2012-2017. About 13,000 employees were expected to lose jobs.
Sidney Jimenez, president of TWU Local 568, which represents some American employees said Monday about 500 to 550 positions, not including aircraft maintenance jobs, may be affected at the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports -- possibly more.
The union is working to try and mitigate some of the losses in an attempt to "protect as many hard-working Miami-Dade and Broward families as we possibly can," Jimenez said.
American is the No. 7 carrier at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport with 5.5 percent of passenger traffic in 2012 through May. It had nearly 6 percent of traffic at Palm Beach International last year.
It's the top airline at MIA with nearly 17 million passengers from October through May in fiscal 2012.
Copyright 2012 - Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
