Headlines:
| Air Jamaica to cut jobs |
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| Tuesday, 27 January 2009 | |
 The national airline Air Jamaica will announce job cuts next
month as part of its rationalisation programme to return to profitability.The cuts were revealed to staff Tuesday in an internal memo obtained by RJR News. The love bird which has been stained with red ink is desperate to soar to higher heights of profitability. The airline, which has been hit hard by the downturn in travel as a result of the global financial crisis, said it has yet another business plan designed to quickly stem significant cash losses. Air Jamaica's Chief Executive Officer Bruce Nobles said the plan involves pulling planes from several routes. "We are filing a schedule that reduces our flying to try to match our capacity with the demand and we are reducing, eliminating, at least for the time being flights between Jamaica and Miami, also to Grand Cayman, Los Angeles and Atlanta," "We are also eliminating flights from Jamaica to the Eastern Caribbean, to Barbados and Grenada and we are rescheduling and restructuring the rest of our system to try to increase the utilization of our aircraft and to try to match our capacity with the demand," Air Jamaica is to exit those routes on February 26. Reductions in the workforce According to the airline, the closure of the affected routes will result in reductions in the work force. Sources said pilots, flight attendants and ground staff will all be among those relieved of their posts. However, Mr. Nobles said estimates of the number of persons that may be let go have not been decided. "We have not yet figured out what the number is but it will affect all levels of the company because we are trying to get the company's costs down and try to match revenue coming in the door," "We are going to work with our employees and all the folks who represent them to try to minimize the impact on employees. We will be looking at things like voiluntary redundancy, leaves of absence, early retirement or any number of other possibilities to try to minimize the impact of the exercise to reduce our costs and not reduce our employees," said Air Jamaica CEO Bruce Nobles. As part of the plan, the airline's fleet will also be reduced from 15 to nine aircraft. There are also plans to restructure existing leases and negotiate aircraft returns. Mr. Nobles said the focus will be shifted to the airline's home markets of South Florida, the Washington-New York corridor and Toronto. The business plan has already received the approval of the Board of Directors of Air Jamaica, Minister of Finance Audley Shaw, and the Cabinet. The final details of the plan and its implementation will be worked out over the next few weeks. Unions gearing up for redundancies In the meantime, unions representing workers at Air Jamaica are gearing up for the possible impact on staff of the new business plan. Kavan Gayle, President, of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union which represents some workers at Air Jamaica, is disputing reports that the airline has decided on the number of staff to be let go. Mr. Gayle told RJR News that a meeting with the airline's management Monday, was to discuss the business plan. "We have no indication if its one person, ten persons, 20 persons, 50 persons, whatever number, we have none whatsoever. What was discussed at yesterday's meeting was an outline of the business plan," "We have taken the business plan to see how we can critic it and the plan is to engage in discussions with out membership to see in anyway what recommendations we can make," Mr. Gayle expressed some disappointment that the union was not included in the development of the business plan but said the union will be working with management to minisise fall-out from the implementation. "In the event that there is going to be any fall out, there should be some discussions with the union; the parties have agreed that we will try every effort to minimize the effects as greatly as possible because one of the things we want to ensure...is that we don't add to the number of workers who have lost their jobs by way of redundancy," "So I don't know nothing about 600 or whatever the number may be. If that number is coming out of anybody in Air Jamaica that would be very unwarranted and unreasonable," said Mr. Gayle. |