Uncertainty Over American Airlines Layoffs is Taxing Tulsa Families

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

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While the total number of layoffs targeted for the bankrupt airline‘s Tulsa maintenance has declined from thousands to hundreds, months of employment anxiety is taking a toll on workers and their families.

American originally planned to cut about 2,700 jobs at the Tulsa base. That number was whittled down to 1,300, “and with early retirements and attrition, the actual number of layoffs will be less than 450,” officials tell the Tulsa World‘s Michael Overall.

About 300 of those workers will likely take other jobs at American, the paper reports, which means only 140 workers would be left jobless. Still, layoff notices were sent to about 3,000 Tulsa workers, and no one really knows which — or how many — jobs will be cut:

One employee described spending an entire shift in almost complete silence, her co-workers too unsettled to keep up the usual banter along the maintenance line.

That American’s latest layoff plans only affect 4 percent of the Tulsa workforce is of “little comfort to Jessie Moore and her husband, who met each other at American,” the World reports:

The company told their entire department that it was being eliminated, effective Dec. 16.

“We’re gone,” Moore says. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do next. It’s kind of hard to be 50 and starting over.”