United Will Create New Employee Incentive Program Despite Backlash

“Listening sessions” What a joke.
They’ve already made up their minds

It went viral because United is a company that has consistently failed to invest in its employee and customer experience and as a result has had several high profile customer related incidents.

Listening is what United management should have done before they rolled out the lottery.

A fucking lottery... these people have their heads so far up their asses it's almost impressive.

To be fair, it's already generated a good deal of excitement.

Doing some high level math, if 88k employees each earn an average of 1200 per year, that's about $100mm. That's no small sum and amounts to 3% of earnings before taxes ($3bn). One issue that is likely affecting this decisions is the ever-increasing minimum wage. If United was willing to pay a $10 per hour employee a $1200 bonus (would amount to about a 6% bonus), employees in certain states will soon be subject to a $15 minimum wage (a 50% bonus of sorts), which the Company needs to somehow pay for.

Isn’t United getting a huge windfall from the Trump tax cuts? Instead of throwing a bone to their employees they’re giving them what amounts to a pay cut and trying to spin it as “exciting.” Shame on them!

I read it as "We are creating a new incentive program. We heard you that the proposed one sucked. We're still committed to creating something new, but you will have a voice. Note: It's not a democracy, so it still might suck, but you have a voice."

Of course they will. Executives will now make a show of "listening" to employees and then do what they were going to do anyways.

I for one think it’s impressive that Oscar will be giving up all his non-base pay of about 17million for a chance to enter the lottery.

@Andy K - let's see. I wonder what the executive suite's bonuses are for the year. I wouldn't be surprised if it's around $100MM also. Looks like they're trying to keep executive bonuses but push employees out. Typical activity. I think the airline is already seeing the writing on the wall, a reset is coming and they want to phase out bonuses now instead of later. Of course, they could just raise all the metrics to get the bonus so no one gets one. That's what always happened to me until my current position.

"Listening sessions"? Seriously?

Is that the best BS terminology that the "beloved" Oscar could think of? Why not call it a "collaborative", and really put some lipstick on that pig?

The "O" in Oscar is for Out of touch.

I'm totally against what United is doing, but the title of this post is very misleading. There is no confirmation of a new program just yet, despite what the post of this titles suggests.

@KeninDFW - thankfully that is a matter of public information. FY17 is not released yet, but in FY16 total executive compensation (salary plus stock awards plus bonus) was about $52mm. Almost 90% of that is in the form of stock awards, which while substantial, are non-cash and thus cannot be compared to cash bonuses to employees. My point is not to start a debate over executive pay or corporate governance. I am glad that you found your current position!

Any thoughts on this new policy vis-à-vis minimum wage?

I'm surprised this stuff isn't collectively bargained.

@Donna, United was in the bankruptcy years ago, so they don't pay any tax in recent years. So the tax cut does not affect United's after tax profit.

Next time, maybe do some research before making worthless comment?

Do whatever improves employee morale. I want happy staff on my next flight.

Takeaway message: You're getting your bonus for Q1, but we're still taking it away later in the year. Gotcha. That makes it all better.

I suggest you all read "The Lottery," a short story by Shirley Jackson. One of my favorites.

Please discuss.