WestJet is laying off about a quarter of its workforce as part of a restructuring that includes call center consolidation and outsourcing airport operations, the carrier announced on Wednesday.
Under the restructuring plan, WestJet in the coming months will consolidate all call center activity to Calgary and contract out airport operations at all of its domestic airports with the exception of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. The carrier also will "strategically restructure" its office and management staff, according to the carrier.
As a result, WestJet will terminate 3,333 employees, leaving the carrier with about 10,000 employees. When contracting out the airport operations work, it will look for partners who will commit to hiring as many affected WestJet employees as possible, president and CEO Ed Sims said in a video message to employees.
"Reducing WestJetter roles has always been a last resort," Sims said. "If there were other viable options open to us, we would be taking them."
WestJet, which last week announced plans to double capacity in July compared with this month, already has cut costs by more than 60 percent, but the carrier now is in a "valley, where we are now at the bottom, and we have a long and arduous climb out," Sims said. "The damage we've incurred from a weakened demand environment is being compounded by multiple factors, including a patchwork of provincial and federal government travel advisories, constraints on nonessential travel both globally and domestically, and the cost challenges facing our airport and our air navigation partners."