Sky West to Cut 600 Jobs

SkyWest Airlines is not exactly a household name, but they are the tenth largest airline in the US, though they often do not fly under their own name. If you have ever booked a flight on United Airlines then you may have just been flying with a SkyWest Airlines crew in one of their jets.

The company is getting ready to get rid of about 600 workers from its payrolls. While they were not clear on a specific break down of the jobs to be lost we do know a few things about the job cuts to come. First and foremost the company was very clear on the fact that the company is not laying off any of its pilots. We also know that the layoffs will not be coming from anywhere in the home state of he company, so no job losses will come to the workers in Utah. We also know that the layoffs will be distributed across multiple locations where the company has flights going in and out. Positions that are likely to be cut from the roles include baggage handlers, ticket agents and gate employees.

For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” The may explain why the announced layoffs are set to occur either late in the summer or near the beginning of this fall.  With a mass layoff workers are usually given more time to prepare for the loss of their job, and for the community to cope with the loss of the income in the area.

While the carrier is making every attempt to find the soon to be displaced workers a home inside of the company this may not be possible for all of them. At the St. George facility, where another company will be taking over the baggage handling duties the company hopes to find the workers jobs with the new carrier. For the time being however the company has not given any word about how many they expect to be able to keep and how many they expect to be able to transition to the new employer. For the time being there has been no discussion of what kind of severance, if any, is going to be offered to the workers who cannot find another position before the layoffs go into effect.

For the time being the company has not expressed any concerns about its finical progress for the current fiscal year. They have not cited any particular event or change to the company as the reason for the current round of layoffs at all.