by Tim Wood
Last updated: 12:30 PM ET, Fri January 16, 2015
Just days after news broke that United Airlines was looking to outsource up to 2,000 jobs, airline officials told employees Wednesday that they're looking to bring previously outsourced job back in house.
In a letter to employees Wednesday, Senior Vice President of Airport Operations Jon Roitman said United will complete "insourcing" work at nine large airports early this summer.
The decision was born from the outrage displayed by union leaders when United Senior Vice President of Airport Operations Jon Roitman sent a letter to employees Monday, outlining plans for outsourcing about 2,000 positions at 28 airports.
The focus would be with baggage handlers, though working with contractors for that important task hasn't always worked out so well for the airline at times.
There were no specific promises as to how many in-house jobs would be added to the 87,000-employee workforce at United. The airline hopes to add the jobs by early summer at nine airports - Honolulu; Las Vegas; Orlando; Pittsburgh; Seattle; Washington (D.C.) National; San Diego; Tampa; and Portland, Ore.
Union employees are obviously hoping for an even exchange of jobs, but reading in to Roitman's letter, that may be a pipedream.
The airline industry had a "relatively good year in 2014," Roitman said in his comments to employees. You think? If a $19.7 billion net profit industry-wide (an increase of nearly $7 billion from $12.9 billion in 2013) is just relatively good, that's one tough crowd to please.
As for United, they reported $1.1 billion in earnings through the first nine months of 2014 and industry analysts expect the airline to report a full-year profit upwards of $1.5 billion, almost three times its 2013 take.
It's apparently not good enough in comparison to others as Roitman told employees the company must "close the financial gap to our major competitors" by reducing costs and raising revenues.
Improving customer service was mentioned as well, but again, we'll point to the end result of outsourcing baggage handling at airports like Denver. When it's not your company and it's just a job, you're more likely to end up with ... well, broken guitars.
(I'm sorry, that might be piling on. I'm all for companies making money. Being charged $200 for flight changes or re-banking frequent flyer miles, I'll just never accept this as a standard cost of flying.)
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