Originally Posted by
hummingbear
Advocating a slowdown is a very poor idea. It’s illegal & will land you in a great deal of personal distress & accomplish nothing of substance on a large scale. What I don’t know if the company realizes, though, is that organic loss of enthusiasm is way more destructive than an intentional slowdown. An organized action can be turned off & on like a light switch. (Contract signed, everything goes back to normal immediately.) Employee morale? Once that’s gone, it’s gone.
Workplace enthusiasm is like a speed/drag power curve. Once you get on the backside of it, it becomes exponentially difficult to get it back. Scott would not be the first airline manager to lose the confidence of his pilots then lazily conclude that they’re just insatiable money grabbers when modest attempts to buy it back fail. We’ve all seen this movie before.
For the last couple years, all I’ve heard from this airline is how powerful & meaningful are personal touches from the pilots. Which, honestly, great- let’s be the customer service airline. But there’s nothing new or creative about wanting “Give A *******“ employees under DGAS conditions. Telling us for months that you’re planning to give us an industry leading contract in 2 weeks then finally making a mediocre offer & suggesting we’re not being reasonable is a major flub up. I think the “we are not close” statement was the beginning of a rapid drop in general enthusiasm, & honestly, I worry about where we end up as an airline if he hasn’t cleaned this up by the summer. A contract today would continue United’s meteoric momentum. A contract in a few months could just be a more expensive way to have p1$$ed off pilots.
Have you talked to any Southwest guys lately? This all sounds very familiar.