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8/2/2005
Pit Res closing is a stark reminder that it is the employees who pay the price for mismanagement of the airline...
The following article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes the Pit Res employees' personal loss and tragedy behind management's decision to sub-contract their work to non-airline call center companies. Besides the economic impact on long-service employees, the subcontracting has lead to numerous customer complaints as inexperienced, non-airline call-handlers attempt to resolve the complex issues of US Airways passengers.
'End of an era' as reservations center in Green Tree shuts down
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Near the entrance to US Airways' Green Tree reservations center sits a small collection of plastic Hawaiian leis and a handmade sign urging departing employees to wear one "so everybody can wish you a farewell."
Today, however, there may not be enough to go around.
After four decades of taking calls and booking tickets for US Airways passengers, the airline's last 281 Pittsburgh-based reservation agents and managers will hang up their headsets and leave the fifth floor of a gray, boxy suburban office building for the last time. Their final shift will end at 6 p.m., and a farewell party will follow at a
local Holiday Inn.
Their departure, sure to be emotional and tinged with sadness, marks yet another end to the once-proud US Airways network in the Pittsburgh area. In the last four years, the Arlington, Va.-based carrier has cut more than 9,000 jobs, pulled hundreds of flights and stripped Pittsburgh of its hub status. After today, 3,500 US Airways employees will remain in Pittsburgh.
In the early days -- when the carrier was known as Allegheny Airlines and then USAir -- much of US Airways' traffic funneled through Pittsburgh, the largest hub in the airline's system and the site of many airline support operations, including reservations. The center started on the second floor of an old airport hangar, where bookings were taken down on index cards and passed along to sorters via a conveyer belt. It moved to the more automated Green Tree location in August 1970.
Longtime reservations employees still remember what it was like in the 1970s and 1980s -- when US Airways was profitable and fun. They recall fondly the parties, the company gifts, the friendly relationship with management and the start of lifelong friendships at work.
With the carrier in its second bankruptcy and attempting to merge with Tempe, Arizona-based America West Airlines, the mood in the Green Tree office is dark. Commemorative US Airways posters have been torn off the walls, US Airways-branded staplers have been taken and many of the seats once filled with friends have been emptied.
The office exodus began in May, when the airline began carrying out its decision to consolidate reservations work in Winston-Salem, N.C. At the time 750 people still worked in two buildings at Parkway Center, a Green Tree office park. As the weeks passed, though, employees began leaving in bunches, either retiring or accepting transfers or taking cash buyouts to leave the company early.
With so many people leaving at one time, the office settled on the plastic leis as a way of keeping track of the exits and honoring those on their way out.
Longtime customer-service representative Lois Smith plans to exit the building -- and the company -- in high style tonight. Smith, 54, after 20 years with the airline, intends to wear a gray T-shirt reading "Unemployed" and walk out of the building with a boom box playing "Take This Job and Shove It" or "That's What Friends Are For." Outside, a group of ex-US Airways employees are expected to give the departing workers a final round of applause -- a bow to the tradition of "clapping out" reservations employees on their last day.
"I have been clapping people out for years," Smith said. "I hope there is someone there to clap us out." Sadly, she added, "I am never going to see any of these people again."
The shutdown of the center is not without hard feelings. Local union official Chris Fox, who represents the customer-service employees in Green Tree, claims US Airways has been docking the pay of departing workers who spend too much time away from the phones on their final day, saying goodbye to colleagues. Employees see it as an insult from a company that asked them to accept deep cuts in pay and benefits several times in recent years, Fox said. The shutdown of the center is not without hard feelings. Local union official Chris Fox, who represents the customer-service employees in Green Tree, claims US Airways has been docking the pay of departing workers who spend too much time away from the phones on their final day, saying goodbye to colleagues. Employees see it as an insult from a company that asked them to accept deep cuts in pay and benefits several times in recent years, Fox said.
The airline denies employee pay is being docked on the last day. "We recognize this is a very emotional time for employees who have worked in that center for several decades, and we want to make sure that they have ample opportunity to find closure in their departure from the center," said US Airways spokesman David Castelveter. "But at the same time we can't lose sight of the fact that we have customers who have high expectations of our company, and we are trying to find the right balance in these final hours."
Morale, though, continues to dip in the final hours. Not much work will get done today, predicted one employee leaving after 27 years.
"At this point, who cares?" said a female employee who asked not to be identified. "What are they going to do, fire us on our last day?"
Reservations agent Nina Palladini, 48, pausing while on break from her shift earlier this week, called today's closing the "end of an era," conceding that it made her sad to think about not spending her days in Green Tree anymore.
"I am going to miss the people," she said.
She also lamented the recent move of some call center jobs overseas to Mexico and El Salvador and the recent shift toward online booking. Palladini, pointing to her colleague Audra Spriggle, said that when customers called with an emergency or to ask for help with a stressful situation, "It's people like me or her who say, 'I'm really sorry.' You can't get that on the dot.com. I think that is where USAir was so successful -- the personal touch."
Barbara Miller, who retired in December after 34 years in US Airways reservations, upset her friends with her decision not to attend tonight's party.
But, "I just don't want to celebrate the closure of that office," said Miller, 55, who lives in Bridgeville. "I loved the people I worked with; I loved everything about the airline. I just want to remember it my way. To me, it's not a celebration. It's a sad time."
