[cross-posted at And, yes, I DO take it personally}
the washington post article this morning on the united airlines pension default is a long-overdue acknowledgement of the horrors united airlines has visited on its hard-working employees for as long as most of them can remember… i’m also delighted to see ellen saracini featured… you may remember that i posted her letter two weeks ago saturday both here on booman and on my own blog… i’d like to think that posting and the great group of kossacks had a little something to do with the washington post’s decision to write the article… i’m also most grateful for the compassion mrs. saracini obviously has for all the others in the same boat…
(more on the flip)
i’ve been threatening to post my perspective on united airlines for weeks and, even though it isn’t in the depth i would like, i want to seize the moment… it’s gonna be a little long so bear with me…
in the mid-90’s after the employee buy-out, when the pilots (and virtually everyone else) insisted that miserable excuse for a human being, stephen wolf, be sent packing, there was a brief period under the new ceo, jerry greenwald, that gave everyone cause for hope… all of a sudden, the front-lint employees were being recognized for what they were – the grunts who make the airline work day-to-day… the buzzword was “employee involvement” and lots of good things started to happen… well, jerry’s heart was in the right place but he didn’t have a plan, he didn’t clean house, and he didn’t have a clue about sustainability … in my role as internal consultant at the time, the phrase i heard repeatedly from senior officers while greenwald was at the helm (always behind his back, of course), was, “this, too, shall pass and then we can get back to running this goddam airline the way it SHOULD be run…” when jerry announced his resignation exactly when he had said he would, the kita (kick-’em-in-the-ass) crowd that had been lying in the weeds, waiting, leaped back into action… sure enough, no sooner had the door closed behind jerry, kita was “re-born,” to the tune of “enough of this employee-coddling shit, we’re gonna play HARDBALL…”
to show they weren’t kidding, senior management opened the pending pilot contract negotiations with a take-it-or-leave it proposal which, everyone agreed, was an insult… all employees had received only bare minimum salary increases for years to support the employee buy-out and in lieu of employee stock awards and most employee groups were considerably behind in industry salary comparisons… probably at least a few of you remember the summer of 2000 when the pilots, in an expression of their anger over what was happening, started to “work to rule…”
anyone familiar with the airline biz knows that there are only two people who can make a departure decision for an aircraft, the lead mechanic and the pilot… the mechanic certifies to the pilot that the aircraft is airworthy and the pilot decides whether or not to accept the aircraft that the mechanic has just certified… if the mechanic decides that the aircraft isn’t airworthy, the pilot can’t override that decision… but if the pilot decides that he/she thinks the air conditioning mechanism isn’t running properly, for instance, the mechanic is required to go back and check… you can see how this this can be turned into a very effective technique for delaying flights… the internal productivity slogan at that time was “on-time zero,” meaning all flights needed to depart on time… the pilots slogan became “zero on-time…” needless to say, the summer of 2000 was a nightmare for anyone who was unfortunate enough to fly united…
in late 1999, early 2000, the value of my employee stock was roughly $40K… i was extremely pleased and grateful to have it as it was going to be the core and substance of my retirement assets which, with social security (are you listening, bushco?) and what i anticipated would be a small pension, would keep me off the streets in my old age… by the end of 2000, that stock had lost well over half of its value… like any “prudent investor,” even though i was vested, i decided to hold on to it out of the belief that the company, in no small part due to the work that i and my colleagues in organizational development were doing, would turn around and be the company we all believed it could be… all the way up to 9/11, however, the stock continued to depreciate and rumors of doom abounded…
then came 9/11… i was working at dulles airport at the time on an organization development project that involved a teaming approach to the on-time departure of international flights… i was at the airport that day and, without going into the details (i intend to write that up eventually and post it on my other blog), i decided that i needed to do something besides sit behind my desk and wring my hands… i assigned myself as a lobby supervisor and proceeded to work the next 18 days straight, at between 15 and 18 hours a day, helping scared, lost, and hugely delayed and inconvenienced passengers and beleaguered customer service agents navigate the new post-9/11 world… after that grueling stint, i took a long weekend and flew to visit my son and daughter-in-law in tucson… the day after i returned, i was given a layoff notice…
again, without belaboring intervening details, united’s stock value continued to decline and, on my birthday, december 9, 2002, the airline declared bankruptcy, rendering what little stock value remained worthless… in january, 2003, i filed a claim for a pension that was pitifully small but, i figured, was at least something… i opted for a ten-year payout until age 65… i have collected a little over two years worth now and it appears that may well be all that i will see…
the reason i post this is not to gain sympathy for myself or for anyone else although there are certainly those who not only deserve it but whose plight is far worse than mine… again, i am pleased to see mrs. saracini’s situation being used as a lever to pry open the united can or worms… but why i think this information needs to be out there is because united is no more and no less than a reflection of what businesses and the social fabric of the united states has become – monuments to greed and to the insatiable desire of the “have’s” to “have more…” it needs to stop but how and when that will be accomplished is the question…
