Hi Everyone - my thanks to those that have provided some clarification and correction to some facts presented in this story. I hope I was able to address them in this revised post. My thanks to you all for support - Jim.
Some of you may have noticed that on my Facebook profile is a picture of the United Airlines tulip sign with the number "685" hand-written below the tulip. This is not referring to a non-existent United flight number. The 685 represents the number of United Flight Attendants facing Involuntary Furlough (IVF) starting April 1, 2014. Nearly 700 of the least senior Flight Attendants, working under the United Airlines subsidiary, were now going to be without a job. This was not going to affect just those recently hired, this was going to hit Flight Attendants that were hired as far back as 2008.
Some of you may have noticed that on my Facebook profile is a picture of the United Airlines tulip sign with the number "685" hand-written below the tulip. This is not referring to a non-existent United flight number. The 685 represents the number of United Flight Attendants facing Involuntary Furlough (IVF) starting April 1, 2014. Nearly 700 of the least senior Flight Attendants, working under the United Airlines subsidiary, were now going to be without a job. This was not going to affect just those recently hired, this was going to hit Flight Attendants that were hired as far back as 2008.
Although customers may not see it, United Airlines is still operating with three (3) subsidiary companies. There is still a United Airlines ("sUA") subsidiary, along with the well as a Continental Airlines (sCO") and Continental-Micronesia subsidiaries. Sadly, with the senior management ranks made up largely of executives from Continental, it follows that major decisions regarding staffing are going to favor the Continental side. This is what is happening with the United Flight Attendants. Last fall, management announced that with scheduling and equipment changes, the sUA side would have a surplus of nearly 1,700 Flight Attendants. At the same time, the sCO side is actively recruiting and training new Flight Attendants. It doesn't seem fair, and doesn't make sense, does it? The other question is, how can this happen?
With any merger, integrating employee ranks is probably the biggest challenge. Neither side wants to give up anything. It is hard to accept the other side's way of doing things. The new management that came in from Continental has not handled this part very effectively. They wanted and hoped that sUA employees would just accept the same terms and conditions that sCO employees had under their respective collective bargaining agreements.
At the time of the merger, the Pilots from both sides were represented by the same union (the Airline Pilots Association-ALPA); therefore, they were able to fairly quickly reach a joint agreement. It also helped them in that a new FAA mandate was coming out requiring new hire pilots to have 1,500 flight hours experience (up from 250). Airlines are now facing pilot shortages.
It took nearly 3 years for management to reach an agreement with Customer service workers. On the sUA side, customer service employees are represented by the IAM (International Association of Machinists), but at sCO, customer service workers are not unionized. That is a big challenge, but an agreement that was amenable to workers on both sides was finally approved in 2013.
This brings us to the Flight Attendants. At the time of the merger, sUA Flight Attendants were being represented by the AFA (Association of Flight Attendants), and sCO Flight Attendants (Continental and Continental-Micronesia) were being represented by the IAM. The first thing to be taken care of was to decide which union would represent the combined groups. It was a hard-fought fight, and the AFA did prevail. sCO flight attendants would become AFA members; however, there would still be three distinct groups with different leadership.
Now that there was one union, the task before AFA leadership was to work with United management to come up with a joint agreement for all three groups. Separate Tentative Agreements were quickly drafted, but they each had differing pay scales and work rules. sCO flight attendants got paid more, but sUA flight attendants were able to keep in work rule protections that kept the company from forcing them to put in long days with a lot of unpaid time, or overnight layovers of less than 8 hours, both of which affected the health and safety of the flight attendants. The sUA side also kept in hard fought protections for their most junior members flying "on reserve," which is an important component missing from the sCO agreement.
After the tentative agreements were reached, the AFA formed joint bargaining committees to sit down with United management to come up with a joint permanent contract. These talks were going nowhere, United management wanted concessions from all sides, and they appeared in no hurry to come up with an agreement. These stalled talks were sadly leading to divisiveness among the AFA leadership from all sides. It became more apparent that a "divide and conquer" strategy was was how United management was going to deal with the Flight Attendants. This was hard for me to watch as I did publicly advocate for the AFA (and took some heat from the sCO side for doing so). I still think the AFA is the right group to represent the flight attendants; however, to be truly effective, leadership among the three groups had to work together and not let themselves be divided.
This brings us to the present and the "685." Of the 1,700 planned layoffs for the sUA side, just over 1,000 opted for either the Voluntary Furlough, or the a "cross over" arrangement to go work on the sCO side, or entered into partnership arrangements with those facing layoffs. Under a partnership arrangement, both parties would work fewer hours, but it meant both would keep their jobs and benefits. In January, United management came out with their list of those who would be Involuntarily Furloughed in April. However, not just the list, United management also announced that they had reached a "last chance" arrangement with the leadership of the sCO AFA for the "685" to cross over to the sCO side. Under this "last chance" arrangement, those crossing over would not be able to take their seniority with them. They would have an April 1, 2014 hire date and become the most junior members among the Flight Attendant ranks.
This is where things got really ugly, and the sUA AFA leadership immediately rallied together their ranks to rally support for the "685" facing a very difficult situation. What was more problematic was the ability for United's senior management to make a "back room" agreement with the sCO AFA leadership for the cross over. This meant that United management would remain entrenched in their position that they only wanted to work with sCO AFA leadership and that they (management) were going to leverage their position with the sCO side to come up with a joint agreement that would lead to concessions from both sides.
sUA AFA leadership immediately filed a grievance with the Department of Labor citing that United management was violating the terms of their contract. They also took the sCO AFA leadership to task and complained to the national AFA about the actions of sCO leadership. AFA's National President, Veda Shook, needed to act quickly to put a stop to this effort to further divide the United flight attendants.
The last Friday, the sUA President, Greg Davidovitch, announced that an agreement had been reached with United management for the "685" to cross over to the Continental side and retain their original hire date for seniority. I should and do feel happy that the "685" have the chance to keep their jobs; however, I cannot help but feel concerned that United management still has so little regard for their Flight Attendants. If they were unable to garner concessions from other employee groups, they are now hell-bent on doing so from the Flight Attendants. If a joint agreement that would come with concessions was not possible right now, United management is going to thin out, and at the same time de-moralize, the sUA side to the point where they can work with a more amenable sCO membership.
The United Flight Attendants, from all three groups, went through a hard fought election to be jointly represented by the AFA in order to prevent management actions like this from happening. I have become friends with many sUA AFA leaders and members, and I can sense their frustration. I am not on the inside, but I think AFA Leaders need to become more pro-active in this bargaining for a joint agreement, and take action to prevent United management from dividing their membership.
As a shareholder, I do have the power to bring some small voice to this problem. This divisiveness and "Frank Lorenzo - Texas Air" inspired way of forcing concessions is not in the best interest of this airline for the long term. Before March 1, I will be delivering to the Board of Directors my shareholder proposal that will force a discussion and vote of "no confidence" in this type of leadership at this year's Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I am going to ask all of you reading this that hold UAL shares to back me up on this. If you don't own any UAL stock now, please consider acquiring some now so that you can have a voice and a vote at the Annual Meeting this year. My proposal has no chance of passing, but if not in the number of shares if there are enough in number of voices in favor, the Board may pay attention to what is going on. I tried this before with Glenn Tilton and John Tague, but I let them talk me into withdrawing my proposal. I cannot let Mr. Smisek do the same. Some times a fight that you have no chance of winning still has to be fought, if only to keep the battle going.
The job of a Flight Attendant is difficult enough without the worry of more cuts in pay and benefits, working long hours that affect health and safety, or not knowing if you are job is secure. United is a now a profitable operation and shareholders are happy, but a blatant disregard for those on the front-line is not good for the company in the long-term. United management still feels they have more work to do in cutting costs and sadly the Flight Attendants are in their cross hairs. I just wish the all of the employees work groups would display more solidarity with the Flight Attendants. That solidarity is what will truly make United the "Friendly Skies" airline.
