United Airlines Pilots Disrespect CEO Scott Kirby

Just like politics, this is all show by Kirby. People don’t know about how he tells the pilots that it’s the unions fault for not “leading the way,” and then has his SVP come out and say that management wants to see what the market supports before agreeing to anything. He’s talking out of both sides of his mouth, just like a good businessman. Unfortunately it’s the 15,000+ pilots and their families who have to deal with the ramifications of this lack of good faith. THAT is why the pilots turned their backs.

This is a disingenuous characterization of how negotiations have been going. Negotiations began TWO YEARS before covid, not immediately before as is characterized here. In that time the contracts of not only the pilots, but every employee group have expired. What’s more, these are still largely contracts from the bankruptcy and merger era which contained a lot of concessions to help the company survive.

Since then United Airlines has posted record profits and revenues in the years before covid and since emerging from the pandemic. This article also mischaracterizes why the first pilot TA failed earlier this year. It was not because the pilots “wanted a sweeter deal.” It was because it contained a plethora of work rules concessions and forced productivity which would have seen United pilots work even more days, creating new obligations on days off, effectively eliminating them, and doing nothing to fix the abuse of crews that exists since the bankruptcy and merger era concessions of being able to simply roll crews into days off. It not only didn’t do anything to improve work life, it actively sought to make it worse. That is why 94% of United pilots voted no to that contract, don’t get it twisted.

Since then, while management has said they wanted to negotiate, over 70 days have passed where they failed to respond to the pilot union’s proposal. And over those four years since the United pilot contract expired, almost every employee group’s contracts have too such as those of mechanics and flight attendants. Like the union said, they’ve asked for concessions from employees for decades, which the employees granted in hopes of seeing the company through dark times. The company has not reciprocated by offering contracts to fix those either in the record profits period before covid or the record revenues period since. What’s more, the company has publicly admitted on CNBC that they have reached 2019 margins. Therefore it is long time they resume negotiations with every United Airlines employee group. This isn’t just a year or two overdue. It’s FOUR YEARS overdue.

I totally agree with DLPTATL as I find it interesting that you don't mention Ed Bastian at Delta. At Delta, Ed and executive management have had the employee's back forever. There are always disgruntled employees but at Delta, the executives look out for the workers and the workers look out for the airline. Take contract negotiations out of the equation as that's for the pilots and the unions. "An employee’s devotion to his or her company, dedication to the job and consideration for the customer determine a company’s reputation.” - C.E. Woolman, Founder Delta Air, Lines, Inc.

The union at United is horrible. They are rude towards management and towards new hire front-line workers. I'll give you an example. I worked as a supervisor for United and due to the union agreement, we as managment (even supervisors are classified as management) are not allowed to help process and check-in passengers when our lobby is very busy. We can't even tag bags to help out if our gate agents are union. This is because they are afraid we would take their jobs, although we are just helping during peak periods. The customer service team (some of them, not all) have even taken pictures of management helping out during busy periods and submitted it to the union for a contract violation. That is how crazy and tense the relations can be sometimes between the union and management.