Fighting the Attack on GOOD JOBS: US Airways Finds Offshoring Hurts Business

Doug Parker, the new CEO of US Airways, listened to CWA and decided to bring back the U.S. call center jobs the airline's previous chief executive had farmed out to El Salvador, Mexico City and Manila.

Members of CWA Local 3640 in Winston-Salem, N.C., emphasized to management that customers were complaining about long waits on hold, being transferred multiple times and struggling to explain their situation to non-native English speakers who didn't have the years of reservations experience that helps resolve problems.

"He saw that it was a nightmare," said CWA Representative Velvet Hawthorne, a member of the airline's Labor Advisory Committee. "They did it to save money and he saw that it was really costing them money in the end."

"Our reservations team does a much better job than those the work has been outsourced to," Parker told the online business magazine, TheStreet.com, in May. "Despite our efforts to improve the outsourcing, it will never be as good as having our own employees do it."

The North Carolina call center once employed about 1,000 customer service representatives. After US Airways declared bankruptcy in 2002, cuts, concessions and changes that included sending much of the work overseas left the center with fewer than 500 workers, Local 3640 President Vonda Hardy said.

Many workers took early retirement or buyouts, fearing the airline wouldn't bounce back from its financial troubles. But since merging with America West in late 2005, Hardy said things have turned around.

She said CEO Parker, who had done no reservations outsourcing at America West, "heard the magnitude of complaints" and has worked diligently to make things better. He recently visited the Winston-Salem call center, where Hardy talked to him about raising the wages of first-year workers in order to attract and keep new hires.

More than 270 people have been hired as a result of bringing the work back to Winston-Salem. But Hardy said more are needed and more incentives would help employees view their work as a career rather than just a job.

Hardy is optimistic that the new management team wants to build more positive relations with CWA.

"I feel that they do want to boost morale and they do want to make things work," she said. "When we got a union in 1999, I think the company was devastated — we're in the South. But they finally had to concede that we're not going anywhere and they might as well work with us."