American Airlines outsourcing Tulsa jobs, considering more

Thursday, April 20th 2006, 5:29 pm

By: News On 6

Outsourcing is getting to be more and more common with office jobs, things like accounting and finance. Now the outsourcing bug has hit the American Airlines business office in Tulsa.

40 jobs are being moved out and as News on 6 reporter Steve Berg explains, 100 more jobs might go.

No employees would talk to us on camera at the American Airlines business office at 61st and Memorial. One told the News on 6 privately they were told to sign non-disclosure agreements. But it's no secret that more and more, outsourcing in business has become a way of life in the U.S.

"Companies are outsourcing an enormous amount of I.T. work." Oral Roberts University Business Professor Charles Atkins says in 2003 alone, the U.S. outsourced more than $100-billion worth of jobs. And accounting and finance jobs like the ones in the American Airlines business office are popular targets, because in recent years, they have become so much more portable. "Because they can essentially, using modern technology and modern communication techniques, they can move their costs here to another place and reduce it substantially."

An American Airlines spokesman told the News on 6, that 20 jobs will be moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth office. 20 others are being outsourced to a British and a French company, although it's not clear if the work will be done overseas. 105 other jobs are being studied and could be outsourced also.

The good news is that they say 100 jobs are staying in Tulsa for sure. But when all is said and done, those hundred could be the only ones left from the current total of 250.

These are not jobs at the American Airlines maintenance base in Tulsa that most people are familiar with.

American tells us that all the outsourcing decisions should be made by the end of the year.