United says more job cuts possible

Chicago-based United Airlines is leaving the door open for more job cuts in Houston related to its merger with Continental Airlines.

United, now the world's largest airline, said Tuesday it wouldn't rule out the possibility of additional reductions as part of the ongoing integration with Continental.

"We haven't completed the companywide integration, so we don't know what effect the completion of that will have on Houston," United spokeswoman Mary Clark said Tuesday.

United officials have dismissed suggestions, however, that the 1,300 Houston job cuts it announced last week were in the works even before a City Council vote that went against the airline.

After the council voted a week ago to open Hobby Airport for international flights, United sent out a bulletin to its employees saying that because of the decision, it will reduce passenger seat capacity at Bush Intercontinental Airport by 10 percent and cut 1,300 jobs there - affirming the findings of a study it commissioned ahead of the Hobby vote.

The 16-1 vote allows United rival Southwest Airlines to build a $100 million, five-gate expansion at Hobby. United opposed the plan, saying it would undermine international operations at Bush Intercontinental, its largest hub.

United says the job cuts and capacity reductions are a direct result of the looming Hobby expansion, even though Southwest is not planning to start flying abroad until 2015. United also said it will reconsider subsequent phases of a major expansion project at Bush Intercontinental and cancel a planned nonstop flight to New Zealand.

Voluntary transfers?

Clark said job cuts won't necessarily come as layoffs or furloughs, but also could include voluntary transfers.

Airline observers say the Hobby saga provided United a scapegoat for unpopular moves it already had in the works.

"The reality here is that these are things United probably needed to do anyway. But it was in the middle of a political game, and it figured that it had found a way to deflect the fallout," Brett Snyder, author of The Cranky Flier, a travel blog, wrote in a post Monday.

Snyder said in an email the wording in the employee bulletin released on the day of the Hobby vote was "vague" in reference to the exact implementation of the 1,300 job cuts.

United said in a company newsletter Friday that it would cut 800 Houston jobs immediately as a result of the Hobby expansion and probably phase out another 500 over time as it starts the 10 percent capacity reduction this fall.

"Will there be some job loss? Sure, if the airline does in fact reduce its schedule by 10 percent," Snyder said. "There may also be job loss as they are relocated to Chicago, for all I know. But the timing makes it sound like it will be very drawn out. I'm skeptical that we'll actually see 1,300 jobs disappear."

Josh Verde, a Houston-based airline consultant and former United Express pilot, agreed that jobs would have been phased out regardless because of what he says is a decreasing number of regional flights connecting through Houston, which means less need for employees, including ramp workers.

17,000 still in Houston

In its pushback against Southwest's Hobby proposal, United emphasized that although it moved 1,500 corporate jobs from Houston to Chicago as part of the merger, it has added more routes and more capacity to Bush Intercontinental than any of its hubs since the merger.

As a result, United says, it still employs about 17,000 people in Houston - the same as before the merger - although a higher percentage of them are now flight crews, customer service agents and ramp workers rather than office employees.

After a rocky transition to a single reservation system, frequent-flier program and website earlier this year, United is largely done with the technological portion of its integration with Houston's former hometown carrier Continental, a brand that United has retired. But none of the two carriers' labor unions has struck joint contracts with the parent company, United Continental Holdings.

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