Southwest warns of spring BWI cuts

Airline could furlough nearly 1,300 by spring

Southwest Airlines could furlough nearly 1,300 of its workers at Baltimore/ Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport by this spring due to reduced air travel brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The airline — BWI’s largest carrier — filed a new Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, last week that shows its plans to furlough 1,181 employees who work at the Anne Arundel County-based airport byMarch 15, 2021. The notice comes less than a month after the company announced it could furlough an additional 106 employees by Jan. 25.

Southwest employs almost 4,500 workers at BWI and is the third-largest private employer in the county, according to the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation.

If the furloughs occur, they will not affect current service at BWI and will be a temporary means to address costs related to a drop indemand for air travel, an airline spokesperson said.

Southwest has been negotiating with its union representatives since October to help offset what it said will be more than $1 billion in overstaffing costs next year, said Russell McCrady, Southwest’s vice president of labor relations, in a statement.

But a lack of progress in those talks has led Southwest to issue WARN notices lastweek to 6,828workers across its system of 58,000 employees, McCrady said.

“We are willing to continue negotiations quickly to preserve jobs if we can achieve the support that allows Southwest to combat the ongoing economic challenges created by the decline in demand for air travel,” he said.

Charles Cerf, the president of the Transportation Workers Union Local 555, which represents around 200 Southwest workers at BWI at risk of furlough, said the union has already provided cost savings to the company in the range of $100 million, including early retirements and extended leave this year and in 2021.

“We hope there can be [an agreement], but we’re not going to give up

decades of collective bargaining to help them during a temporary crisis,” Cerf said, adding that the proposed furloughswould be the first of their kind in Southwest’s history.

“During 9/11, [Operation] Desert Storm and all the other crises in this country, we’ve never had furloughs where you were forced to leave the company,” he said.

In September, total passenger traffic — arriving, departing and connecting passengers — at BWI dropped by 60% — 848,579 down from 2,139,465 in September 2019. Prior to the pandemic, the airport was on track to set a new record year for passenger traffic, said BWI spokesperson Jonathan Dean.

In April, at the peak of the spring surge in coronavirus cases, passenger numbers dropped 96% compared to the year prior, Dean said.

More recent data from November and the first nine days of December collected by the Transportation Security Administration shows departing passengers were down 63% and 65%, respectively, compared to the same periods last year. This data does not include arriving or connecting passengers.

Southwest’s announcement could be a sign that employers in Anne Arundel County and acrossMaryland are tightening their belts as coronavirus cases continue to rise throughout the state. Anne Arundel reported its highest daily case total Thursday with 341 new cases. Nearly 20,000 county residents have been infected with the virus, and almost 300 have died.

Employment gains made through the summer and fall could be slowing down, as a result, said Alex Marre, regional economist at the Baltimore branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Though more will be known at the end of next week when the November jobs report is released, national estimates show a net gain of 245,000 new jobs, less than half of those created in October.

“We’ve seen leisure and hospitality hit hardduring this pandemic and have heard from many businesses that they have cut travel back or out entirely,” Marre said. “Airports, hotels, and restaurants are all suffering. Each job loss has ripple effects through the economy, as lost wages translate to lost local demand for goods and services.”

Anne Arundel County had seen its unemployment rate begin to rise again this fall, reporting a rate of 6.3% in October, up from 6% in August. At the peak of the spring surge in May, employment reached 9.3% in the county.

Anne Arundel Health System, the county’s second-largest employer with 4,900 employees, has already felt the impact of furloughs and other cuts. Anne Arundel Medical Center furloughed 1,100 workers in April.