United's Punchline

Click on the picture to access the video.

This is a video of UAL's "parrot mouthpiece" Jean Medina telling some retirees' wives (as she has told the press for a 1000 times following Glenn Tilton's instructions), that UAL had to terminate the almost fully funded A-Plan, to survive. She added how much her stock option bonus check was. I would describe it as a "right cross combo overhead jab" to Medina's corporate brown nose...

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that happy employees work more and better. I know that most big companies are the same, and the more employees, the harder it is to treat people as individuals. You become a "number" in the gigantic machine. However when all those "numbers" work together in harmony, the company thrives.

I believe that even before 9/11 we had poor management practices but because we were making lots of money, nobody really paid attention. We had layers upon layers of useless paper movers. It would take so long for any request to be processed because of the many people anything had to go through before reaching the appropriate desk. And I don't mean days or weeks. It would literally take months for anything to happen. And that was the best case scenario. Most of the time, you had to file the same thing several times because your request would get lost somehow.

After bankruptcy, finally everything was streamlined to be more efficient and cost effective. However right now it just seems to most employees that the people making decisions for the company are only in it for the money. That would be fine if some of that money was handed down to everyone who made sacrifices to make sure that United survives. That is not the case. Since we exited bankruptcy, a system of rewards was put in place. Every quarter that we meet or exceed our goals (those numbers are determined by the company), we get a "bonus check". The amount is based on your salary. It doesn't seem fair because most front line employees took such a pay cut that the bonus checks feel like a slap in the face.

Most of us gave up about one-third of our pay to help the carrier survive the bankruptcy that followed the 9/11 attacks. We also lost most of our benefits and that doesn't necessarily equate to a dollar amount. Altogether it has been a huge drawback.

Some of the anger stems from stock and options worth millions, given to senior management after we emerged from bankruptcy in early 2006. All talks about reclaiming lost salary and benefits are frozen to at least 2009 when the Flight Attendants' contract is up, and 2010 for the Pilots. However we just learned that the company is exploring spinning off the frequent-flier program, maintenance division and other assets, which could reap billions. Why this was not an option before, I don't know. An article in the Chicago Tribune stated that "an investment bank has estimated the value of United's Mileage Plus as a freestanding company at $7.5 billion. When Air Canada spun Aeroplan off as a separate company two years ago, its market value was $4.3 billion. United itself, including Mileage Plus, has a market value of just $5.5 billion".

United claims that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to restore pay to 2000 levels, although we are again making money. I do understand that they carry staggering debt loads and I know firsthand that we need to boost spending on planes and technology in order to remain competitive.

Analysts have said that United could raise about $16 billion if it sought buyers or business partners for units that weren't integral to our core flight operations. "Doing so now would enable the highly leveraged airline to pay down debt and repair its balance sheet, pay shareholders a special dividend, build cash to help fund merger activity or perhaps attract a private-equity buyer". In all this there is no plan to give back anything to the employees. I'm guessing management will give themselves big fat bonuses for coming up with the idea of the century.

Maybe one of them will go in front of employees and retirees and brag about their latest bonus check, and get punch in the face.