imkeww-

I think you have done a fitting job describing many of the origins of UA's problems.

Just some random thoughts from my experiences as a former frequent customer and two positions with the company pre-flight attendant....

-The effects of the 1985 strike live on. Ferris thought he could destroy ALPA but with the help of AFA it wasn't possible. He really miscalculated - what an incredible blunder. Much of the mistrust of senior management comes from this devastating event.

-The whole ESOP negotiation era - with Wolf continually threatening all the employee groups he would sell off the pieces of the airline (and I've no doubt he would have) further adds to the significant deficit in trust.

-The fact that Wolf hated the flight attendants so much he wouldn't negotiate comparable job-security provisions like with ALPA and IAM sealed the fate of AFA not participating in the ESOP.

This in turn resulted in the other employee groups being very angry and mistrustful of the flight attendant group who weren't perceived as making a sacrifice like the rest of the employees - I wasn't a F/A then and the bashing the F/A's got was really disheartening and totally without merit. This further pitted employee versus employee.

-During the ESOP years, Greenwald didn't clean house.... ineffective middle and lower management didn't seem to have any accountability. Hard to respect your supervisor who gets away with completely bewildering things.

-'C' scale - the idea that you could pay someone $6.65 and hour to be a reservation agent or a customer service agent....get real! A res agent has to be proficient in reading, interpreting date etc. In other words, someone who has at least some college. Those sorts of folks may be lured to work for UA for a short amount of time, but the poor pay resulted in 100% turnover. We still have many agents in positions that really shouldn't be here and they give extremely poor customer service. Our customers to this day still suffer.

-The failure of both the IAM and ALPA groups, together with management, to understand and develop a post-ESOP plan including transitional contracts is really disturbing. What was management thinking? That these employees wouldn't expect wage snapbacks at the conclusion of the ESOP contribution years? And what was IAM and ALPA specifically thinking about their level of participation on the Board of Directors?

UA has all the parts to be something extraordinary. It needs leadership from management and commitment from employees.