White House weighs help for airline workers if no stimulus deal

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said the Trump administration is examining executive actions to help airlines avoid employee furloughs if Congress doesn’t provide assistance in a new round of stimulus.

“If Congress is not going to work, this president is going to get to work and solve some problems,” Meadows said Wednesday at an event hosted by Politico. “Hopefully we can help the airlines and keep some of those employees from being furloughed.”

Meadows said he believes assistance would require another legislative package but that the White House was “looking at other executive actions” and planned “a few” additional unilateral stimulus measures in addition to the package of executive actions signed by Trump last month.

American Airlines Group Inc. has said it will lay off about 19,000 employees on Oct. 1 if Congress doesn’t provide additional financial relief. The airline industry has been badly hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, which caused many Americans to cancel travel plans.

Meadows said he had spoken with officials from American, as well as from United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Delta Air Lines Inc.

A Standard & Poor’s index of the five biggest U.S. airlines fell 1.3% at 11:25 a.m. in New York, paced by declines at American and United.

Congress in March provided passenger airlines with more than $50 billion in federal aid, including a $25 billion payroll assistance program. However, after experiencing a roughly 70% drop in passenger traffic compared to a year earlier, the airline industry is asking for more government support.

Sara Nelson, president of the largest U.S. flight attendants union, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, tweeted Wednesday that it’s “good to see WH wants to restart talks.” But she said executive orders won’t preserve a “clean extension” of the payroll support program.

Debate has stalled in Congress over a six-month extension of the government’s payroll support for airlines, which would carry the same restrictions on workforce cuts. A new round of assistance would avert involuntary job cuts at American, the company has said.

“We have been in touch with the administration and we greatly appreciate their concern for our team members and their support for the aviation industry,” American Airlines said in a statement. “We will continue to work with the administration and our bipartisan supporters in Congress and hope to come to a resolution in a timely fashion.”

Delta declined to specifically comment on any discussions with the White House.

Delta said Monday that it would furlough 1,941 pilots but hasn’t outlined involuntary changes for other employee groups. Southwest Airlines Co. has said enough employees took early retirement and leave that it will have no furloughs through the end of this year.