The airline layoffs that began today will snowball and maim the industry’s ability to recuperate when the book coronavirus pandemic is consisted of unless federal legislators act swiftly to prop up payrolls, the leader of the nation’s top flight attendants union said Friday.
” The casualties are beginning to pile up,” Sara Nelson, the powerful leader of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA), told HuffPost by phone Friday. “We’re just working as quick as we can to keep as many individuals strong.”
On Thursday, Norwegian Air Shuttle revealed plans to lay off about 90%of its staff members, including all its U.S.-based flight attendants, who had hours previously voted to authorize their very first union agreement with the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA). Compass Airlines, a Minneapolis-based local carrier whose workers are likewise part of the union, announced strategies to entirely shut down on April 1.
The news came days after Missouri-based Trans State Airlines, whose flight attendants are unionized with the Teamsters, became the first U.S. provider to close down amidst what financial experts state is already likely an economic downturn.
Out of work claims across markets might top 2.
As Congress drafted bailout bundles for markets gutted by the decline today, Nelson released a sweeping list of needs that any federal relief expense requires business getting funds to utilize the cash to keep employees on the payroll and bars those firms from offering executive bonus offers, buying back stock or paying dividends to investors.
The propositions, consisted of in a two-page memo and laid out in a tearful five-minute speech Nelson gave in a video published to Twitter this week, consist of mandating compa