American Airlines will slash 700+ Tucson jobs
April 19--American Airlines will close its regional reservations center in Tucson, eliminating more than 700 jobs as part of a bankruptcy restructuring plan announced Wednesday.
American, which has operated the center here since 1991, says reservations representatives will be offered transfers to other centers or jobs as home-based representatives.
"We will avoid offshoring and preserve those jobs by offering employees the chance to transfer to other offices or become home-based representatives, just like the 150-some home-based representatives already in the Tucson area," American spokesman Bruce Hicks said in prepared remarks.
The timing of the closure is unclear, and American officials didn't respond to a reporter's queries Wednesday.
A company spokesman said recently that the Tucson center employed 719 as of Feb. 1.
American and parent AMR Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection in November. AMR lost $2 billion last year, including restructuring costs, and has lost more than $10 billion since 2001.
The Tucson center closure is part of a larger plan to eliminate 1,200 nonunion jobs companywide as it cuts costs while under bankruptcy protection.
That pushes the company's overall job-cut target to 14,200. It announced plans in February to cut 13,000 union pilots, flight attendants and ground workers, and make other cost reductions designed to slash annual labor costs by $1.25 billion.
American, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is the nation's third-biggest airline with about 73,000 workers.
The changes for agents and similar employees are expected to save $95 million, which American said would match 20 percent cost-cutting targets for all other labor groups.
More than 5,000 people work in Tucson's call-center industry, and the local industry has been expanding in recent years.
The pending closure of the American Airlines reservation center has little to do with the local economy, said Laura Shaw, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities (TREO).
Other call centers expand
In fact, several call centers have expanded their operations in Tucson or located new centers in the area since last July, she said.
Florida-based CustomerContactChannels, or C3, opened a center on the south side last fall that already employs 600 workers.
Synchronoss, a New Jersey-based provider of smartphone services, also opened here last year and has about 400 employees, according to TREO.
Other big local centers operated by APAC Customer Services, Receivable Management Services Corp. and Agero (formerly Cross-Country Automotive) have added hundreds of jobs locally in the past year.
And OptumRx, a unit of UnitedHealth Group that provides pharmacy benefit services, plans to hire at least 400 people by year's end to staff a new customer-service center at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park.
If American Airlines employees choose not to pursue alternatives with the company, there are other call centers that could absorb them, she said.
"There are more alternatives in Tucson beyond American," she said.
But in an industry that depends on contract work, not every provider is prospering or expanding. TCIM Services closed its local call center last fall, notifying the state that it was laying off 122 employees.
Did you know?
American Airlines opened its reservation center in 1991 near Tucson International Airport at 3350 E. Valencia Road, and by 1992 the center employed about 1,100 people.
Employment at the center peaked at 1,356 full-time-equivalent employees in 2001, when the company ranked 29th in the annual Star 200 survey of Southern Arizona's largest employers.
But the local payroll dropped along with the fortunes of the airline industry after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, falling to about 800 by 2004, according to Star 200 data.
Reporter Jamar Younger contributed to this report. Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at [email protected] or 573-4181.
Copyright 2012 - The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
