Merger Details Keep American Employees Attention
American Airlines merger has both firms’ workers sweating the logistics
BY KYLE ARNOLD World Staff Writer
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Insiders call the process harmonization, but for American Airlines, US Airways and their employees, the process of merging two companies together won’t sound anything like a joyful chorus.
Bankruptcy courts and federal antitrust regulators, assuming those processes go smoothly on their own, will be just the beginning of a potentially arduous process that will yield the new American Airlines, its 900 routes and 120,000 employees.
And for the 6,200 employees at the American Airlines maintenance base in Tulsa, there will be months and years of uncertainty over job security, wages and benefits as they negotiate and discover exactly how this new company will act and compete.
“These processes take on a life of their own,” said Bill Swelbar, an airline researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s International Center for Air Transportation and a director for Hawaiian Airlines.