These people are living in the past if they assume that labor actions naturally translate to sympathy towards labor and antipathy towards the airline as the big, bad corporation.

The customer annoyance will be directed at both the airline and the staff leading to unsurprising walkouts to other airlines. Mutually assured destruction is the the only realistic result of this action. If they think, they can affect controlled disruption, they are deluded. With information flowing as quickly as it is and the operations as inter-connected as they are, it will blow up in their faces.

So, if I were to give the benefit of doubt to the collective intellligence of the FA union, I would assume all this posturing is to create sufficient discomfort now in passengers that UA is forced to back down to prevent any bleeding prior to taking action.

It would seem there are those that want this to happen and then those who don't. I'm not sure what the true numbers are of the ones who will do this but I can say this, it will hurt more than help in the long run. I'm not sure but I sure feel if the company was out of CH11 and strong, they would do a lot more to meet the demands of the FA than they can currently.

If the fuel costs continue to go down and the planes keep full (like they have been most of the time I was on them) then UA will come out of this a very strong. IIRC, they would have produced a good profite if the fuel costs were not as high as they have been and if they didn't have to pay all the lawyer costs, they would have made a good profit.

If feel we all need to work with this airline. We the flyers are the ones who are keeping them flying because we are paying the fares and are living on these planes more than the FA. The FA need to work some with the UA personnel to ensure they do have a job to do in the future. Like I've said in the past, a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. I've had to do this in the past and I've come back up to the pay and lifestyle I enjoy today. It will be hard but it will not be this way for the rest of UA's life.

Since UAL made a motion to the BK judge today to cancel all union contracts unless the various unions agreed to this latest round of work rule changes and pay cuts, where will your sympathy be? Those flight attendants are now being asked to work 16 hour duty days, while being paid for 8 hours. Can you think of any other job where that is the norm?

Sooner

I know of plenty of situations where people had to take 50% pay cuts. I had to do this for one of my companies. We also had to ask people to come in over weekends and work for survival of the company. People did it as long as they understood without it we were not going survive.

Fixed hours are not the norm in my industry.

Ever tried to find out how long medical interns work in a single stretch and how much they get paid? Know what the norm there is?

All this happens because there is an expectation that it is a temporary situation which is likely to improve. Unions ensured that companies did not continue to profit at the expense of workers. The same assumptions do not apply when companies cannot survive without employees being affected.

There is a possible objection that UA might make these work conditions the norm even if it comes out of bankruptcy and continues to profit. Even in the case of CO where the unions were smashed by Frank Lorenzo, has that resulted in current CO employees being forced into slave labor.

What is realistic is that the FAs will never go back to the previous work package after these contracts are broken because those contracts are not realistic in the changed airline environment. I suspect this is what is most disturbing to the employees. But it is also unrealistic to posture that the worst of what is askd of them while UA is attempting to come out of bankruptcy will also be the norm if and when it comes out of bankruptcy.

Yes, it's called software engineering. I'm glad I finally found a position that discourages working unpaid OT, but in that industry it is far from uncommon for people to work 10-40 hours unpaid OT a week on an ongoing basis.

But it is not like this is going to stay! The airline industry is going through such a big, rough patch that everyone needs to work together, not AGAINST each other.

By going out on a strike and annoy customers, all you are doing is hurting yourself. If customers get annoyed, and they switch carrier, then United will have even less money - and that includes even less money to pay Flight Attendants!

I remember in another post that someone mentioned that the whole relationship between the FA's and the company has changed dramatically, and that the last airline where FA's were truly loyal and cared for the company they worked for, was PAN AM - yet they still ended up liquidating.

THIS DOES NOT NEED TO HAPPEN TO UNITED! In my opinion, United is much better prepared - Pan Am was a different story.

16 hour duty days? Are you sure? http://www.unitedafa.org/res/cba/bb/07.htm appears to propose shorter duty days than 16 hours, but you could be right.

Terrible as it might be to have to sit around for a few hours between flights, it's not like the FAs have to do a lot of "work" for the non-flight portion of their duty day. (I realize that their "clock" begins at pushback and ends at parking brake, so some preflight work is "off the clock.")

Anyway, focusing on their hourly rates and the number of hours can be deceptive. Their book hourly rates are much higher than those earned by most people in this country. Of course, they don't "work" a typical 40 hour week for 48-50 weeks per year. Lots of people work unusual schedules.

Firefighters, for example, might work 10 days per month. Of course, those days are 24 hours long. Some months a lot of that time might just be spent "sitting around" while other months, they might spend most of their time on fire calls. In one sense they are "working" all 24 hours of each duty shift. In another sense, one could fairly subtract all the hours they spend sleeping, eating, watching TV, exercising, etc. (hours not spent at fires or cleaning equipment, etc.) as "off time" (but "on call"). I live across the street from an LA city fire station, explaining my familiarity with their work schedule.

FAs spend a portion of their duty day working on board airplanes. They may also spend a good portion of their duty day just sitting around, eating, napping, watching TV, reading, etc., while waiting for their next flight or walking thru the airport to get to their next flight.

What really matters is whether their monthly or annual pay is enough to entice them to do what they do. If it isn't enough, then many will quit.

I don't work for United, and I don't like the idea of any kind of strike. But, at some point, I do think the employees will say enough is enough. They have been asked to make numerous sacrifices in wages and work rule changes, only to see the money be spent to give bonuses to management or wasted on programs that did not contribute to the future of the company.

Sooner

It would be so simple to say what to do, or not what to do...not standing in FA shoes. At best, each FA must choose. After reviewing some of the pay charts and AFA material I would need some World wide pay scales for FA to see the trend and adjust them for COLA to see the real picture. Certainly if you [FA] are highly invested with time and the love of flying, then other alternatives are not very inviting, and you may feel you are being screwed. A good case can be made indeed. I think FA's will have some clout if they pick their times for a strike carefully. The ability of the flying public to shift to other airlines at the drop of a hat is limited with reduced capacity. I think the air carriers impacted will really feel the pressure, and the industry as a whole will hurt. Taft- Hartley will probably be involked if FA's pick the holidays to strike, so you will need a strike plan that will work, say in Feb or March, which won't work. The bottom line is FA's must become more productive for the dollars they earn, or be in the position they are in with wage cuts.

Talking about bringing Chaos.....Hello, we all have been in it for quite some time. The choice as I see it is to continue to feel not appreciated, and misunderstood, or be willing to become more valuable.

I do value FA's service, your safety, and all the effort I don't know of, or see FA's do. The best winning strategy I see is love/value the customer. It is the bottom line.[ Impossible to do feeling unappreciated and misunderstood.] The one thing FA's have the choice/power to do/be to grow an airline.

Below is my e-mail to the AFA. I e-mailed it to '[email protected]'. I too feel sorry for the gloabl economy impacting poeples pay scales and way of life. The reality is there are many people willing to work at UA for what UA is proposing or even less. Just look at the hotel lockout in San Fran. Most of the locked-out employees have been replaced. UA needs a model where level of service is rewarded not longeviety. My boss just flew Singapore to Asia and UA back. No comparison even though he flew C on Singapore and F on UA.

If the AFA creates CHAOS at UA, the airline will move towards liquidation and we all will lose. It will be Mutually Assures Destruction for all parties. I will start looking for a way to park my miles on a *A partner tonight.

Greetings.

I am troubled by your stance with United Airlines. I sympathize with your plight, but by striking or invoking CHAOS (TM), you will send the airline to liquidation. That means all of your members will not have a job. No major airlines are hiring and I am sure that the express carriers that are offer a suite of pay and benefits far less than you would earn at United now or after proposed work changes. The airline industry is a brutally competitive industry and your choice is really do you want part of something (come to agreement with what UA wants) or all of nothing.

On my recent UA flights, over 90% of flight attendants do want to lose their job and that is what you will do to them if you proceed with plan.

The world operates in a mostly free market system and the changes in the global airline business are something you need to wake up to and accept.

Cordially,

Yet they also bent the company over the barrel and extorted huge wage and benefit increases from them when times were "plenty".

It's a boom or bust industry, which results in feast or famine for the employees and management.

The late 1990s were a boom/feast point.

We're now in a bust/famine point.

Soon enough, we'll be back to boom/feast and the unions will make sure their members get their massive raises and management will blow money on dumb things and then a few years later it will be bust/famine time again, and cutbacks will be required.

^ ^ Excellent points.

I don't wish painful pay cuts or job losses on anyone, but they are coming, whether the employees like it or not.

Organized employees have never wanted to share in the downside, preferring instead to only share in the upside. And to be truthful, management would also prefer to not be forced to share in the downside.

But the horizon looks to be filled with nothing but "downside" for the forseeable future. And everyone is going to share in it. Even the customers.

Are UX (Skywest, AWAC, etc.) FA's unionized under AFA or someone else?

Would the (normally anathama) practice of preferentially booking UX flights help to avoid these sorts of disrptions?

(Coming from someone who still avoids shipping UPS whenever possible because the 1997 Teamsters strike left package of mine in limbo for weeks.)

This is just typical rhetoric from a union that wants to give the impression that they care or matter. The challenge for them is - they don't matter any more. When a company is in bankruptcy, they have no control. To imply that they'll gain control and credibility by causing disruptions across the company is ludicrous and foolish. It really gives you a good insight into the maturity of the leadership.

This is what unions do when they're in a lose-lose. They'd rather see the company go under than see the union go under, which further solidifies my opinion that unions seve little to no value in today's economic climate. The entire notion is just insane.

There will be plenty of very willing people eager to replace jobs vacated by employees who decide to leave for whatever reason.

- T

I can't think of another job where this is the case, but I do know of another industry where 50-60% of their employees were made to work 0 days for 0 hours (ie laid-off). The airline industry is a rose garden compared to the blood bath that the telecom industry went through a few years ago. To put in perspective Nortel, UA and AA had about the same amount of employees. To date, Nortel has laid off more employees than UA and AA combined. (and the remaining ones took a pay cut) Nortel and Lucent laid off more people than UA or AA ever had!

As a person who has laid people off and has been laid off with a shake of the hand and a 2 week check, I can't comprehend why the FA's arent counting their lucky stars to be able to at least get SOME income while looking for another job. I have plenty of friends (including myself) that would have jumped at the opportunity.

IMO, the quicker you can get over the anger towards your past employer, the quicker you realize that you have plenty of skills that others will pay for. I am sure this is the case for the many good FA's that I have meet!