No wonder airline employees are so crabby. They’re afraid of the bump.
I’m not talking about the dance made famous by the George Clinton and Parliament’s song Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk).
No, this bump hurts, because it bumps you right out of a job.
Northwest is the latest carrier to announce layoffs — 2,500 of them. This comes on the heels of American (7,000), United (1,600 front-line and 950 pilot), US Airways (1,700 front-line) and Delta (4,000), to name a few.
Here’s what US Airways spokeswoman Michelle Mohr told the Charlotte Business Journal about how the layoffs would affect the city.
It’s very unlikely that you’ll see a real affect in Charlotte. It’s those flight reductions — in Las Vegas in particular — that are driving the employee cuts.
Some 800 airport customer service positions are being eliminated in Las Vegas.
You’d think that would be simple enough, right? Eight hundred people in Vegas get pink slips and go home to find jobs somewhere else. Not so fast.
In the world of airport customer service, front-line employees around the country are considered one big happy-ish dysfunctional family, regardless of the airport in which they work. The whole lot of them is maintained on a giant list, ordered neatly by seniority. The same thing goes for pilots, flight attendants and mechanics, in many cases.
So here’s where “the bump” comes in. Those employees in Las Vegas will be offered the option of moving to cities around the system that have current vacancies. When the next schedule change comes out, the fun will really begin.
Hypothetically, let’s say Jimmy from Las Vegas took an open position in Omaha just to keep a job. His seniority date is June 1, 1990. He has no intention whatsoever of staying in Omaha. At the next schedule change, and thus the next shift bid opportunity, he decides he wants to live in Charlotte.
Fred is happy with his job in Charlotte. His two kids are in school, play soccer, his wife is on the PTA and they have a house in the suburbs. His seniority date is October 1, 1990. Along comes Jimmy from Omaha who bumps Fred out of his job because he has more seniority.
Then Fred finds Susie who has a seniority date of December 1, 1990 in Phoenix. He bumps her. And so on. And so on. Until the lowest 800 people are bumped out of their jobs altogether, and the next-lowest 800 find themselves bumped to Philadelphia, which is everyone’s last choice place to work.
No wonder airline employees are afraid of “the bump.”
