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A traveler walks previous a Southwest Airways airplane because it taxies from a gate at Baltimore Washington Worldwide Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 11, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Photographs
Southwest Airways’ customer support brokers will quickly work 100% remotely because the provider strikes to shut its reservations facilities.
“Southwest Airways simply introduced they’re closing all of the Reservation Facilities and transitioning to 100% distant work,” stated the Worldwide Affiliation of Machinists and Aerospace Staff, the labor union representing the airline’s customer support brokers, in a be aware to members dated Wednesday.
The shift is efficient Sept. 1, Southwest stated, although the airline added that almost all reservations brokers have been working remotely all through the pandemic. It has greater than 3,200 customer support and reservations brokers based mostly in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Oklahoma Metropolis, Phoenix and at Southwest headquarters in Dallas.
The brokers’ fundamental job is to assist vacationers with reservations and journey adjustments. The bodily places the place brokers have been based mostly will now be open to different departments for repurposing, an organization spokesperson stated.
The union stated in its be aware that Southwest made the choice with out union enter. The group did not instantly return a request for remark Thursday.
The closures make Southwest the most recent firm to weigh whether or not in-office work is important, efficient and engaging for staff in a post-pandemic tradition. Southwest and different airways are scrambling to rent new employees as journey demand roars again after a two-year stoop.
“Evolving to a completely distant workforce brings elevated flexibility, each in attracting and hiring new Staff from throughout the nation, and in scheduling present Staff who’ve labored at file effectivity in a distant work atmosphere,” Southwest stated in an announcement.
Lots of Southwest’s employees who’re based mostly at its company headquarters have a hybrid mannequin “based mostly on job operate and enterprise wants,” in line with the spokesperson.
Delta Air Traces, United Airways and American Airways nonetheless employees reservations facilities. A Delta spokesman stated the airline has no plans to alter.
Most of Alaska Airways reservation brokers work remotely, a spokeswoman stated, and JetBlue Airways’ customer support brokers have labored from house all through the airline’s greater than 22 years of flying.
Spokespeople for United and American did not instantly touch upon whether or not they plan to make the same change to its Southwest rival.
Some airways are holding on to and even increasing in job areas that can’t be executed remotely, like pilot coaching. United Airways, for instance, just lately introduced a $100 million enlargement of its pilot coaching heart in Denver.
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