Layoffs

[complexintentions]

Any AC pilot who think that there won't be mass layoffs, or that this will be over soon, are in complete denial about the scope of the crisis.

The infection numbers are just ramping up and a number of countries who decided not to take more drastic measures earlier are on the same - or even worse - statistical trajectories as Italy. And it is an utter horror show there. North America may be lagging but by how much. Days? Weeks at most?

Bickering about seniority is mind-blowing. Same mindset as hoarding toilet paper. Time to rearrange some priorities!

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[rudder]

Express carriers are parking significant number of aircraft and associated pilot layoffs.

Scope ratio won’t be an issue even with most of the mainline WB fleet parked.

[Stu Pidasso]

We were still conducting interviews yesterday, don't forget the last equipment assignment showed almost 900 vacancies. I for one hope we follow the WJ model of going to significantly reduced blocks to keep everyone employed. Together with an early retirement package, LOA's, we have an excellent Flight Ops Management team and the best CEO in the business.

Hopefully take this ONE month at a time, we can spool up quickly once this passes. Which it will!

AC is probably in the best financial position of any major Airline.

[avflyer]

Any AC pilot who think that there won't be mass layoffs, or that this will be over soon, are in complete denial about the scope of the crisis.

The infection numbers are just ramping up and a number of countries who decided not to take more drastic measures earlier are on the same - or even worse - statistical trajectories as Italy. And it is an utter horror show there. North America may be lagging but by how much. Days? Weeks at most?

Bickering about seniority is mind-blowing. Same mindset as hoarding toilet paper. Time to rearrange some priorities!



graph.png

Lets see what happens, layoffs or not. Life will go on.

[TSAM]

.

[rudder]

We were still conducting interviews yesterday, don't forget the last equipment assignment showed almost 900 vacancies. I for one hope we follow the WJ model of going to significantly reduced blocks to keep everyone employed. Together with an early retirement package, LOA's, we have an excellent Flight Ops Management team and the best CEO in the business.

Hopefully take this ONE month at a time, we can spool up quickly once this passes. Which it will!

AC is probably in the best financial position of any major Airline.

So, how low are you willing to go?

I am sure that CR is more than happy to take your $$

[timeflies]

We were still conducting interviews yesterday, don't forget the last equipment assignment showed almost 900 vacancies. I for one hope we follow the WJ model of going to significantly reduced blocks to keep everyone employed. Together with an early retirement package, LOA's, we have an excellent Flight Ops Management team and the best CEO in the business.

Hopefully take this ONE month at a time, we can spool up quickly once this passes. Which it will!

AC is probably in the best financial position of any major Airline.

oh boy... you must live in a fairytale filled with kool-aids.

[complexintentions]

Lets see what happens, layoffs or not. Life will go on.

Of course it will. And please don't take my comments as wishing ill on anyone whatsoever. I'm glad to hear that AC is better positioned to survive than in the past.

But given the scale of how this is unfolding I just don't get the sense that there is a full grasp of how massive the impact will be, perhaps because North America is lagging behind Asia and Europe in being hit by the tsunami. And appears even less well-prepared.

"Reduced blocks"? What flying will there be when Canada finally realizes like everyone else is has to shut EVERYTHING down for awhile to slow the spread? 500,000 new EI applications this week but AC pilots won't be laid off? Come on.

Really, not saying this for the sake of being a doomer. But time to get real and try to prepare, even if only mentally.

Astonishing speed, extraordinary breadth: How this recession differs from 2008

[Stu Pidasso]

We were still conducting interviews yesterday, don't forget the last equipment assignment showed almost 900 vacancies. I for one hope we follow the WJ model of going to significantly reduced blocks to keep everyone employed. Together with an early retirement package, LOA's, we have an excellent Flight Ops Management team and the best CEO in the business.

Hopefully take this ONE month at a time, we can spool up quickly once this passes. Which it will!

AC is probably in the best financial position of any major Airline.

oh boy... you must live in a fairytale filled with kool-aids.

What I am is, old enough to have seen major setbacks before, admittedly this is the worse. I just looked outside and the sun did rise in the east, time to simmer down and let ACPA & the corp sort this out. How low would I go? ACPA has a fantastic history of work sharing, CEO took 25%, how about we start there? End of the day it looks like AC will be the only game in town for limited air travel and has always been treated as a utility service by the feds. Who will be on the hook for a large chunk of cash.

If you are employed by AC, consider yourself very lucky to survive this sh*t storm.

[rudder]

What I am is, old enough to have seen major setbacks before, admittedly this is the worse. I just looked outside and the sun did rise in the east, time to simmer down and let ACPA & the corp sort this out. How low would I go? ACPA has a fantastic history of work sharing, CEO took 25%, how about we start there? End of the day it looks like AC will be the only game in town for limited air travel and has always been treated as a utility service by the feds. Who will be on the hook for a large chunk of cash.

If you are employed by AC, consider yourself very lucky to survive this sh*t storm.

Given the published schedule and capacity reductions, AC could easily lay off the bottom 1000-1500 with 30 days notice and severance pay per the CBA with zero operational consequence. These would all be pilots with 0-4 years of service, vast majority still on flat pay. Payroll savings would be nominal.

A 25% (for example) across the board MMG reduction would represent a multiple of the aforementioned payroll saving.

This choice is more politics than practicality.

The TS pilots voted 97% for a 25% pay reduction and the company response was to lay them all off. Different company - different circumstance.

Hopefully AC will take a more enlightened approach.

[Fanblade]

Given the published schedule and capacity reductions, AC could easily lay off the bottom 1000-1500 with 30 days notice and severance pay per the CBA with zero operational consequence. These would all be pilots with 0-4 years of service, vast majority still on flat pay. Payroll savings would be nominal.

A 25% (for example) across the board MMG reduction would represent a multiple of the aforementioned payroll saving.

This choice is more politics than practicality.

You have just nailed the conundrum. Flat pay, the Bane of every new hires existence, makes significant cost savings difficult for the company through layoffs. They would be far better off getting a chunk of my pay check in Lou of layoffs.

The thing is we already have a very large blocking window. AC can get the 25% cost savings just from using the lowest blocking window possible and still lay-off without any negotiations required. Well not quite 25% as reserve minimum is 5 hours higher than a block. But still I think it will have to be more than an overall 25% pay cut to stop furlough. 55 hours seems to be emerging as the norm. That is a 30-35% reduction in payroll.

I take Calin as practical and bottom line driven. Always. I think it is why we may be taking so long to know anything.

I also wonder if this is why the Transat pay cut fell through. If, I stress if, the deal has a chance in the future you can’t have AC employees taking a greater hit than Transat employees through this crisis. I wonder if Transat pilots will have a chance to re enter mitigation negotiations. The problem there though is that it is a complete shutdown.

With that said I am also a realist. That solution would only be temporary until getting better eyes on the horizon.

[cloak]

Likely there will not be major lay-offs for pilots at Air Canada as long as pilots agree to cuts. This will also save the company substantial time and money for massive retraining. After 911 cuts were in the form of pay-cuts which took some time to return to previous levels; in this case it is wiser to reduce monthly blocks for a period of time, which requires no further negotiations to return to previous levels, plus hopefully it is more short-lived and there will be good demand for air travel after recovery. Of course things could get worse, but they could also get better and there is no point to increase prediction of doom and gloom as some like to do!

[iflyforpie]

Any AC pilot who think that there won't be mass layoffs, or that this will be over soon, are in complete denial about the scope of the crisis.

The infection numbers are just ramping up and a number of countries who decided not to take more drastic measures earlier are on the same - or even worse - statistical trajectories as Italy. And it is an utter horror show there. North America may be lagging but by how much. Days? Weeks at most?

Bickering about seniority is mind-blowing. Same mindset as hoarding toilet paper. Time to rearrange some priorities!



graph.png

So...... almost 1/10th the swine flu pandemic nobody remembers?

[altiplano]

Likely there will not be major lay-offs for pilots at Air Canada as long as pilots agree to cuts. This will also save the company substantial time and money for massive retraining. After 911 cuts were in the form of pay-cuts which took some time to return to previous levels; in this case it is wiser to reduce monthly blocks for a period of time, which requires no further negotiations to return to previous levels, plus hopefully it is more short-lived and there will be good demand for air travel after recovery. Of course things could get worse, but they could also get better and there is no point to increase prediction of doom and gloom as some like to do!

Couldn't agree more. Cut the hours to reduce layoffs but maintain the pay rate, give flexibility where necessary but maintain the work rules, ensure sunset/snapback clauses and even gains are attached to the recovery and any management pay increases.

We are going to take our lumps one way or another, but make sure we get the upswing when the recovery comes.

[complexintentions]

So...... almost 1/10th the swine flu pandemic nobody remembers?

Good grief. The numbers presented in that graphic are to show trends, not absolute values. Those can't be known yet for Covid-19. Duh?

The swine flu was contained. Covid-19 has not remotely been contained. See the difference?

Besides, this thread is about economic impact (job losses), not stats on dead and infected.

If believing this is less serious than swine flu helps you feel better, that's fine. I wish the world markets agreed with you. The numbers are looking more like 1929 than 2009. That's not gloom and doom prediction, that's reality.

I guess it depends on how much cash AC wants to burn on retaining staff versus how long it believes it can do so and not weaken itself to the point of insolvency. Since no one has an end date on the pandemic, surely it's prudent to consider one possible outcome is to cut expenditures quickly and preserve a war chest for the future? Or is Air Canada so much better capitalized, managed, and just plain knows better than the rest of the world's airlines?

I have my doubts.

[L39Guy]

Senior, junior, mid-seniority; everyone should feel some of the pain of this COVID-19. Outside our fish bowl of the airline industry there are scores of people where worksharing is not an option - there ain't no work and hence 1/2 million of them applied for EI this week.

I have already communicated with my LEC that we should drop the hours as required to keep everyone on the property, everyone working and everyone current for when things turn around. And things will turn around eventually and soon.

AC pilots have done what they have had to do to keep people employed over the various crises of the past twenty years; let's hope they do the same this time around.

[Inverted2]

Millions are losing their jobs here. Even if this virus goes away by summer no one is going to travel vs. keeping food on the table. It’s going to be a much longer time before things return to normal. (If they ever do)

PS. 500,000 applied for EI last week. 27,000 same time last year.

[altiplano]

CI

You did present a distorted graph though which misrepresents the trend significantly.

Not saying the event isn't significant, just pointing out it's a poorly constructed graph for a layperson to get an impression of relative severity between countries.

[L39Guy]

I guess it depends on how much cash AC wants to burn on retaining staff versus how long it believes it can do so and not weaken itself to the point of insolvency. Since no one has an end date on the pandemic, surely it's prudent to consider one possible outcome is to cut expenditures quickly and preserve a war chest for the future? Or is Air Canada so much better capitalized, managed, and just plain knows better than the rest of the world's airlines?

I have my doubts.

With almost $8 billion cash, short and long term investments as well as access to lines of credit, equivalent to roughly 6 months of operation, that is pretty solid. If AC did nothing - flew empty airplanes, did not reduce staffing expenses and had zero revenue - it would be October before it ran out of cash. That's obviously not going to happen as the fuel and navigation costs go to zero as the flying drops and staffing costs will decline with either layoffs or work sharing programs.

I would submit that AC is in excellent financial shape to weather this storm.

[Red1]

There will be a tipping point when the fear of not feeding you family out ways the fear of potentially getting sick.