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In the weeks following Sept. 11, the lines at the unemployment office grew longer and longer and the stories depressingly similar.
With the worst over,
some companies
are actually hiring againBy Lyn Danninger and Russ Lynch
ldanninger@starbulletin.com rlynch@starbulletin.com
The State Department of Labor noted that claims for unemployment benefits were coming in at more than three times the normal rate as tourism arrivals were slammed week after week.
State economists were estimating the state could lose up to 24,000 jobs as well as $1 billion in visitor spending.
Companies large and small began either laying workers off or slashing work hours. Aloha Airlines, ABC Stores, Continental Airlines, Hawaii Airlines, United Airlines, DFS Hawaii, Marriott Ihilani Resort, Atlantis Submarines and many of Waikiki's hotels were just some of the well-known names effected.
A trip to the unemployment office turned into a day-long event as people squeezed into the narrow room and lines stretched out the door.
Many of those standing in line said they'd first had their hours cut, then were moved to on-call status and finally were laid off indefinitely.
While travel and tourism businesses such as hotels and restaurants in Waikiki were in the first wave of companies affected, it wasn't long before the businesses that provide support services -- such as commercial printers, florists and souvenir suppliers -- were hurting.
Now, unemployment claims are generally declining. There are lingering effects of the bad times, however. One example is the use of a federal program that allows unemployment compensation beneficiaries to extend their benefits.
The state Department of Labor sent out 35,774 extension notices at the beginning of April.
Business has been brisk since that time, said Miles Yasui, who runs the program development office for the unemployment division. So far 5,143 people have signed up for the extended benefits, he said.
The 13-week extension is part of President Bush's post-Sept. 11 economic stimulus package. It means those still unable to find a job can collect an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits.
Overall, Hawaii appears to be recovering from the disaster wrought on the tourism-reliant island economy by last year's terrorist attacks.
Tourist traffic is up, some companies are hiring again and while there is still a lot of uncertainty because Hawaii's biggest industry, tourism, is living on shorter-term bookings than ever, the worst seems to be past.
And at restaurants, catering both to tourists and residents, things are picking up, said Fred Livingston, owner of Sunset Grill, the Crouching Lion and in Waikiki the Trattoria, Matteo's and Davey Jones Ribs.
"We're within 10 percent of our normal level, if anything in this business can be called normal," Livingston said.
In fact, he likes the business enough in today's environment to be looking for acquisitions.
"One of the things that I was very impressed with," after Sept. 11, he said, was the way restaurant employees hung in to save the day. "I have about 250 employees and they have a lot of camaraderie. They cut down on their hours and days so everybody would get something," Livingston said, making layoffs unnecessary.
At Aloha Airlines, all of the 250 people furloughed as tourist traffic fell after Sept. 11 have been recalled. "Interisland is still substantially down year-over-year," said spokesman Tom Yoneyama, but Aloha's expansion outside Hawaii is helping. Aloha, already flying to Oakland since 1999, added Burbank, Calif., this week and will start flying to Vancouver, B.C., next month.
"In our West Coast business, we are anticipating a robust summer," Yoneyama said.
Hawaiian Airlines, which also has been expanding its mainland business since starting there in the 1980s, is "very optimistic," said its spokesman, Keoni Wagner. "Bookings are reasonably strong for all the new routes," which include Sacramento and Ontario, Calif., starting June 7, and Phoenix, Ariz., in October.
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"We are in a growth mode, we have been hiring people to staff the new flights," Wagner said. Hawaiian sought to bring back 132 flight attendants who had been furloughed prior to the start of the Sacramento service, but not all were available so that meant new hires, he said.On Lanai, where 400 of the 1,100 employees at the Castle & Cooke Inc. resort hotels had a "change of status" a few weeks after Sept. 11, the hotel operators are again hiring. The company that owns and operates the Lodge at Koele and the Manele Bay Hotel hasn't talked about how many employees were actually let go because some of the labor saving was done through early vacations and reduced work hours as well as furloughs.
But the company is now looking for food and beverage workers and is seeing positive signs, said spokeswoman Sheila Donnelly-Theroux.
"Golf rounds at Koele are up 16 percent from last year. Hotel occupancies are better than expected. This summer there are more reservations on the books than there were last year," she said.
"(Sept. 11) was a very big thing and now, the total visitor bookings are really up 10 percent," she said.
The hotel operators expect revenues in 2003 to equal 2000, which was a strong year, Donnelly-Theroux said.
But in Waikiki, some hotel workers are complaining that their employers are taking advantage of their willingness to offer concessions immediately after Sept. 11.
Eric Gill, financial secretary-treasurer of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 5 accuses the hotels of maximizing profits by continuing to operate with less staff while expecting the same workload, in some cases mandating overtime, as occupancy has picked up.
"Generally what our workers feel is that their patriotism and willingness to sacrifice for the company has been taken advantage of," Gill said.
While tourism has bounced back, the Japanese market appears to have flattened out without regaining pre-Sept. 11 levels.
A quick look at the past six months shows what has happened.In October, the first full month after the Sept. 11 disaster, total arrivals at Hawaii airports from the mainland and overseas were 71 percent of the year-earlier level. A month later, arrivals averaged 76 percent of the November 200 level. Last month, the arrivals figure had risen to 90 percent of the April 2001 total.
Arrivals from Japan in October, the first full month after the disaster, were 48 percent of the October 2000 total. In November, the level was 45 percent of the previous November's number. Last month, Japanese arrivals were 80.4 percent of the year-earlier level.
All of these are estimates from raw numbers gathered at the airports and the total count includes returning residents as well as people moving to the islands to live. However, tourism officials say they are a close guide to what is going on, since tourists make up by the far the majority of arrivals.
Outrigger Hotels & Resorts Senior Vice President of Marketing Rob Solomon said the arrivals numbers don't tell the whole story but business is rising. "There's definitely some leakage between the arrivals numbers and when you take it down to hotel stays and revenues," Solomon said.
But bookings at Outrigger and its Ohana brand hotels have been "basically positive, even since the beginning of the year," Solomon said.
New reservations are running at a higher pace, he said. "The good news is, people still want to come to Hawaii," Solomon said. "The bad news is, the booking window is shorter." People are leaving it to the last minute to set up their Hawaii trips, which makes it more difficult for hotels to plan ahead.
"We have to keep on selling, keep promoting and filling the seats the airlines have," Solomon said. His information is that airlines will have 90,000 to 100,000 more seats into Hawaii available this summer than they did last summer, before anyone anticipated the events of Sept. 11.United Airlines, which laid off 171 Hawaii employees in November, has been expanding its services and rehiring, although there are still about 100 jobs not refilled, said Tom Renville, managing director for Hawaii.Meanwhile, work weeks and hours get longer for those who are in jobs. "The employment sector tends to be something of a lagging indicator," Laney said.
United Airlines, which laid off 171 Hawaii employees in November, has been expanding its services and rehiring, although there are still about 100 jobs not refilled, said Tom Renville, managing director for Hawaii.
"On the neighbor islands, everybody has been returned to work," Renville said. "Our loads are looking pretty good for the summer," he said, but he said it is hard to look far in the future because people are waiting until the last minute to book, in a new type of market that offers cheap deals on very short notice.
United recently increased Hawaii flights, bringing back its third San Francisco-Maui daily flight and offering a weekend Denver-Honolulu flight which is "doing very well," Renville said.
At Continental Airlines, Ron Wright, managing director-Hawaii, said there is no question that visitor traffic from the mainland is increasing and Continental is accordingly adding seats.
The airline announced last week it will switch to a Boeing 777 for one of its two daily Houston-Honolulu flights, adding 48 seats a day to a service that had earlier in the year doubled its size from one 235-seat Boeing 767-400 carrying 235 people to two a day.
Summer business looks good, Wright said, but "there is probably a bit of a lag" between a business increase and hiring. But a very strong demand from the mainland and that looks good for Hawaii, Wright said.
