Scott Kirby at Training Center yesterday
I’m at TK for CA Charm School. Scott was here in person to address the new hire class and our class in person.
Observations:
I’d never met him, but I think he legitimately wants UAL to be THE Powerhouse airline. He has the guts and the vision to really bring us where we all want to be. So, thumbs up there. His enthusiasm appears to me to be real and he was, I thought, very honest. He says the LIMFAC on us becoming the behemoth he wants us to be is training capacity. He desperately wants to expand it rapidly. (He didn’t say it, but that obviously gives ALPA HUGE Leverage.)
A few paraphrases of things he said WRT the TA:
1) The deal was done in 4 weeks. He called Mike Hamilton and said, “Let’s get this done.” (My take: amazing how quickly the company will strike a deal when they need something.)
2) He saw it as an opportunity to get more $$ into pilots’ pockets sooner.
3) He acknowledged there were a lot of things in it that were “burrs under the saddle.”
4) He said if he’d realized there’d be such negative response on items such as 10 AM Report and TK Instructors, he’d have done those (and other clauses) differently.
5) He said he hoped it passed because the constraint right now is TK Capacity
6) I then asked him if it didn’t pass, would there be a quick return to the bargaining table to fix it. He said that it was pretty much up to ALPA. If ALPA insists on an entire re-do, it probably wouldn’t happen quickly. But if ALPA is willing to address the major items that pilots find objectionable and not start from scratch, it could happen quickly.
My Two Cents:
United has a historic opportunity, but the company “needs” us to make it happen.
The competition for pilots in the industry is fierce (Scott said this more or less.)
That means We Pilots have a historic opportunity to get much closer back to wages, benefits and working conditions we had before bankruptcy.
We should NOT Fear voting this down. (The sense I got is the Company and MEC are already talking and contingency planning for a NO vote.)
Either way, things will be ok - but I think the company’s ready to really open its wallet to make sure UAL is the first choice of new hires.
Kudos to him for not trying to give us a BS sell job.
If anyone else was there today, please chime in with anything I may have missed, thanks!
*Copied from another forum*