An Email from United's New CEO

jwp_145 said:
It simply blows my mind that every single company out there doesn't understand this. Especially AIRLINES!!! Us employees, whether we are pilots or gate agents, can either A: Do our absolute best, provide a great experience, love our jobs and make you tons of cash, or B: Despise our very existence and burn through money like it is going out of style.

Seems like it would be a simple choice. Make me love my job so much that I'm going to do my best to make you a pile of money.
Click to expand...
It depends on the value the employees will return to the investors. Businesses are not created to give people salaries; and salaries/benefits are an expressions of the economic value that employee can create for owners/shareholders. If treating employees well and empowering them created more value than it is a good thing.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Oh, come on, that's one of my favorite union quotes of all time! :)

"We don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. We just want to choke it by the neck until it gives us every last egg." - Captain Rick Dubinsky

He's an interesting character.
Click to expand...

Looking at his bio....

"Additionally, in the late 1980s he served as the Executive Vice-President, Secretary and member of the board of directors of the United Employee Acquisition Corporation, and as the President and member of the board of directors of Airline Acquisition Corporation. In that capacity he led the initial attempts of United’s employees to acquire majority ownership of UAL through an ESOP"

He's responsible for that item? If so, I don't know how he has many, if any, friends from UAL anymore.

That why he's teamsters?
 
MikeD said:
Looking at his bio.... "Additionally, in the late 1980s he served as the Executive Vice-President, Secretary and member of the board of directors of the United Employee Acquisition Corporation, and as the President and member of the board of directors of Airline Acquisition Corporation. In that capacity he led the initial attempts of United’s employees to acquire majority ownership of UAL through an ESOP" He's responsible for that item? If so, I don't know how he has many, if any, friends from UAL anymore. That why he's teamsters?
Click to expand...

Actually, he still has a great many fans. Some people practically revere him.

The IBT International Airline Division staff is almost all former ALPA. Atlas, Midwest, United. Bourne poached some disgruntled people when he left. Claimed he was going to turn the Airline Division into real competition for ALPA. That's been almost a decade now. Didn't quite work out.
 
Springer said:
I have friends that are/were agents at NWA and now at DAL. The number of keystrokes now required to do the most mundane changes is time consuming and sometimes requires two computer screens. Big step backward after the merger. And don't get me started about the DAL part timers.
Click to expand...
I was a part timer because they only allowed our station 6 full timers. I still had my schedule, at least, set to 37 hours a week and some weeks would work upwards of 45-60....but the company wouldn't give me a full time status so I wouldn't get the benefits. A chunk of those "full timers" worked less than 20 hours a week. All that meant for my station was seniority pretty much, not how many hours you worked.

I don't know how NWA systems were, but DLTERM was a relatively nice system to override certain functions. Problem was whether the agent knew how to do it or not. Regardless, it's going away to the new dumbed down system. I expect many agents and customers to be furious come January of 2016....that is if Richard Anderson actually sticks to his word.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Actually, he still has a great many fans. Some people practically revere him.

The IBT International Airline Division staff is almost all former ALPA. Atlas, Midwest, United. Bourne poached some disgruntled people when he left. Claimed he was going to turn the Airline Division into real competition for ALPA. That's been almost a decade now. Didn't quite work out.
Click to expand...

With how many UAL people lost everything in the ESOP during the bankruptcy? I would think anyone in any position who pushed such a plan.....management or union.....would be highly hated by the affected employees.

From what I remember of following that, it was a steaming pile of crap, what with the large concessions given in wage cuts to the company; in addition to not being able to sell the stock, as well as there being penalities for not going to retirement. All with no say or vote in company decisionmaking. All ESOP seemed to do, was make profit for the company, on the backs of the employees; who traded wages and benefits for stock options that went worthless that went worthless after the bankruptcy, as well as the terminated pension plans. And then even more concessions on the backs of the employees during the bankruptcy.

How anyone with any relation to or hand in this would still have any friends (apart from management friends), is rather surprising.
 
Last edited:
Springer said:
I have friends that are/were agents at NWA and now at DAL. The number of keystrokes now required to do the most mundane changes is time consuming and sometimes requires two computer screens. Big step backward after the merger. And don't get me started about the DAL part timers.
Click to expand...

It's "Post-Merger Selective Memory".

We all have it.

Everything was awesomer before the merger, each side claims, right in the middle of a sentence about how amazingly better things are currently going.

Before the merger, we were both bankrupt and everyone would literally wake up, turn on the news hoping there wasn't a story about our respective employers dissolving.

Now we're stacking cheddar like a 1980's coke dealer and people are reveling about how great the past was.

Whatever. :)
 
MikeD said:
With how many UAL people lost everything in the ESOP during the bankruptcy? I would think anyone in any position who pushed such a plan.....management or union.....would be highly hated by the affected employees. From what I remember of following that, it was a steaming pile of crap, what with the large concessions given in wage cuts to the company; in addition to not being able to sell the stock, as well as being there being penalities for not going to retirement. All with no say or vote in company decisionmaking. All ESOP seemed to do, was make profit for the company, on the backs of the employees; who traded wages and benefits for stock options that went worthless that went worthless after the bankruptcy, as well as the terminated pension plans. And then even more concessions on the backs of the employees during the bankruptcy. How anyone with any relation to or hand in this would still have any friends (apart from management friends), is rather surprising.
Click to expand...

You have to remember, this was hailed as a new age of labor ownership of their own company at the time. Virtually no one questioned it at the time. Only in hindsight is it viewed as a tremendous mistake.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
You have to remember, this was hailed as a new age of labor ownership of their own company at the time. Virtually no one questioned it at the time. Only in hindsight is it viewed as a tremendous mistake.
Click to expand...

I was a teenager when it went through but I remember a number of pilots asking very pointed questions, including questions on why 55% ownership only entitled the employee owners 3 of 12 seats on the board. I think a lot of United people felt like they were in a corner, with Wolf, the financiers, and even union leadership extorting hundreds of millions in exchange for career security. I don't remember a bunch of celebrating even if Greenwald made things seem better. No doubt anything was better than Wolf, and those were pretty exciting times for United, lots of international expansion, SFO and dot com wealth, new 747s. Good times, but not because of the ESOP in my memory.
 
Cazadores said:
I was a teenager when it went through but I remember a number of pilots asking very pointed questions, including questions on why 55% ownership only entitled the employee owners 3 of 12 seats on the board. I think a lot of United people felt like they were in a corner, with Wolf, the financiers, and even union leadership extorting hundreds of millions in exchange for career security. I don't remember a bunch of celebrating even if Greenwald made things seem better. No doubt anything was better than Wolf, and those were pretty exciting times for United, lots of international expansion, SFO and dot com wealth, new 747s. Good times, but not because of the ESOP in my memory.
Click to expand...
Not to mention that the FAs opted out of it - they were smart and refused to accept any concessions, most of the mechanics did NOT want it and employees started investing outside of the company. To say that virtually no one questioned it, is completely false/untrue. Many of the pilots questioned it as well. $5 billion in pay and benefit cuts. There were plenty of strong arm tactics used to get employee's approval of the buy out like the firing the janitors, then the flight kitchen workers and then threats of more lay offs until the ESOP was approved. The machinists felt like they had to accept the ESOP for fear of losing their damn jobs. APLA and management both coerced the employees into that lunacy.
 
Last edited:
Cazadores said:
I was a teenager when it went through but I remember a number of pilots asking very pointed questions, including questions on why 55% ownership only entitled the employee owners 3 of 12 seats on the board. I think a lot of United people felt like they were in a corner, with Wolf, the financiers, and even union leadership extorting hundreds of millions in exchange for career security. I don't remember a bunch of celebrating even if Greenwald made things seem better. No doubt anything was better than Wolf, and those were pretty exciting times for United, lots of international expansion, SFO and dot com wealth, new 747s. Good times, but not because of the ESOP in my memory.
Click to expand...

The major flaw of ESOP was that it favored management in nearly every way, which was apparent to some in how it was laid out. There seemingly was next to nothing the employees were truly getting from it, aside from empty promises and concessions given. While revolutionary a concept, it does appear that there was a good amount of writing on the wall as to what employees were sacrificing vs what they were actually benefitting.

Was sad to see what happened with that in bankruptcy to the employees, and with those who ended up with golden parachutes from it. And worse, the downfall of a once great airline.
 
If you don't know how to get your employees to be their best and to come to work motivated by more than a desire to keep from being fired, your management skills are zero. That is the most important thing managers can do, especially for those employees in a customer facing role.

Unmotivated employees who want to do just enough to keep getting that paycheck and nothing more provide a crappy customer experience. It shows. And over time, it will drag your company down.

Derg said:
I'm a few credits short of a bachelors in business and I'll tell you, not a single bit of attention is spent on how to motivate people or get their best out of them.

And maybe it shouldn't, I don't know. But if you're going to be an effective leader, you need to look more toward the Craig Jeleniks than the Jack Welchs.
Click to expand...
 
I always try to be super polite, helpful, and friendly to all when in uniform. I'm so tired of getting crapped on by management and seeing customers getting the same treatment it's absolutely absurd.

Just this past week I flew on a paid ticket(VACAY!) and was absolutely astounded at the rude and demeaning treatment by some of the agents. As a commuter I was used to gate agents trying to deny the jumpseat for whatever reason and the stress it involved, this time I wanted to just lay low. Amazed at how one agent went out of her way to be a colossal jerk to me while I was just standing in line with the Mrs. My wife was dumfounded. We were just waiting in line, quietly and had an agent come up and demand i get out of line because there were people behind me with an earlier flight. Not an nice request, just moved the rope and demanded I leave the line. Customer service is missing, but also is the theory of caring about ones employees.

The flight crews, however, were some of the most friendly I've ever experienced.
 
Ajax said:
I always try to be super polite, helpful, and friendly to all when in uniform. I'm so tired of getting crapped on by management and seeing customers getting the same treatment it's absolutely absurd.

Just this past week I flew on a paid ticket(VACAY!) and was absolutely astounded at the rude and demeaning treatment by some of the agents. As a commuter I was used to gate agents trying to deny the jumpseat for whatever reason and the stress it involved, this time I wanted to just lay low. Amazed at how one agent went out of her way to be a colossal jerk to me while I was just standing in line with the Mrs. My wife was dumfounded. We were just waiting in line, quietly and had an agent come up and demand i get out of line because there were people behind me with an earlier flight. Not an nice request, just moved the rope and demanded I leave the line. Customer service is missing, but also is the theory of caring about ones employees.

The flight crews, however, were some of the most friendly I've ever experienced.
Click to expand...

Now think about a passenger who had to deal with that gate agent. They're pissed off, they can't believe that an asshat with such piss poor people skills like the clown they dealt with at the gate has a job where he has to deal with people, and they hate the airline.

Good luck changing that!
 
tonyw said:
Now think about a passenger who had to deal with that gate agent. They're pissed off, they can't believe that an asshat with such piss poor people skills like the clown they dealt with at the gate has a job where he has to deal with people, and they hate the airline.

Good luck changing that!
Click to expand...
Exactly, I don't know how you can, it certainly wouldn't be an overnight change. Things would have to change top down. I don't know what caused her to do this, my wife asked what the heck is going on and I explained she probably doesn't actually work for the company but is just contracted and is treated like crap so she doesn't care.
 
I'd talk to a gate supervisor in a hot second if I saw something like that when I'm working.

You can't be a dick in this business any more because it's highly competitive and one nasty blurb on social media about your experience will cost you money.

Besides, it's ultimately more efficient to be polite and courteous.
 
Derg said:
I'd talk to a gate supervisor in a hot second if I saw something like that when I'm working.

You can't be a dick in this business any more because it's highly competitive and one nasty blurb on social media about your experience will cost you money.

Besides, it's ultimately more efficient to be polite and courteous.
Click to expand...
Are you responding to me? Regardless, I probably should have. The people around me in line even had a confused look on their face. I even fly for this airlines regional partner, so I guess it's fitting that I get the crap from them on both ends
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top