Tin Cup

Everyone,

When you have NBA games being played in empty arenas, it’s just a matter of time before UA management comes to us for concessions. Here’s the big picture:

1) MC Todd Insler is one of the best guys we’ve had in a long time. He won’t panic or sell us out.

2) Furloughs are inevitable. I would guess next month they’ll announce about 10% of our guys are gone with more to come.

3) During the furloughs after 9/11, they furloughed a total of 2172 pilots. We had over 12,000 pilots then, just like now. The last guys to get furloughed were back in 10 months. The first guys to get furloughed were out several years.

4) Don’t write Oscar or Kirby saying you’ll fly for free. Don’t be a little b*tch or a coward.

5) The US government should create a bailout fund for the airline industry. As you may recall, UA was turned down in 2004. You may also recall Delta pilots writing the ATSB urging them to turn us down.

6) Paycuts are inevitable as well. Whatever percentage we give them should be short term, e.g. six months or so and should be commensurate with Delta and American in length and scope. American gave 25% for three years after 9/11. United gave 42% for 9.5 years after 9/11 for a grand total of $10,000,000,000.

7) The minute management resumes stock buybacks, dividend payouts or management bonuses is the end of the concessions.

8) Let us not be dumbasses like in 2003 and 2005 and sign a multi-year concessionary contract because we’re going to “lead” the rest of the employee groups. The virus itself should burn out in ninety days, but the economy probably won’t recover for some time after that. Having said that, our economy is strong.

[Zack’s: We have a strong GDP (even with the coronavirus), 50-year low unemployment, 20-year high in household income, near record high consumer confidence, and interest rates near historic lows.]

9) Almost last but not least:

10% of you are contrarians
20% of you are balanced players
70% of you are sycophants.

10) Kirby can ask for 25% tomorrow and he’ll get it with a 90% YES vote, just like Tilton got 30% in 2003.

Focus: Don’t be a coward and let MC Insler take care of business.

Cup

Ni hao

Are you management?

I did not tell them to spend 9B on buybacks. Not getting a dime from me. Big Todd better tell SK to pound sand!

Tin Cup

Negative management. Just trying to be realistic.

Big Todd will take care of business. He just has to corral all the sycophants who are running scared thinking about how much they have to give back to keep their pathetic jobs.

I saw it in 2003, 2005 and 2007. You couldn’t find anyone who voted YES on any of these contracts up to a year after they passed, and 2003 and 2005 passed by 76% or higher.

Cup

baseball

Maybe off topic a bit, but what is the advantage to buying back stock? How was that supposed to be a help to UAL?

Cash in the bank is always golden, so spending 9B seems like a big risk. We didn't get to vote on that stock buyback. I wasn't asked by management my opinion on speding 9B on stock buy backs. that money would sure be handy in the bank right now.

N6279P

I can’t possibly roll my eyes more at this post.

Tin Cup

It’s a short term way of increasing the price of the stock. Since two hedge funds own something like 7% of United, they get paid with a bump in the stock price. It’s meaningless to us as employees, other than the fact that they don’t have $9B in the bank. Where do you think they’re going to make up for the shortfall?

The employees, of course.

O2pilot

Lets say you are a manager. You get bonuses with 100 shares of stock. Lets say there are 1,000 shares total. So your bonus is 10% of the value of the company.

Now you buy back shares. Lets say you buy back 100 shares and that costs $1B to do that. You now own 12% of the company. You get a 2% bump for throwing away $1B dollars of company money.

Share buybacks are nothing more than a lever for senior management to get a little more to themselves. They’d easily throw away $9B if it meant them getting $1M more. In a heartbeat.

They claim it was “to reward shareholders”. But shareholders can sell any time they want. Which most of them have sold and bailed. So now that money is gone.

And they are going to want us to take it in the shorts so they can get the company in a position to do the SAME THING AGAIN.

Tin Cup

Here’s another thing I’ve seen: lots of tough talk prior to the concessions, then everyone folds up like a bunch of patsies.

Happyflyer

Bookings aren't soft because the flying public is broke.

cadetdrivr

Whoa.....

Before anybody trips over themselves to offer concessions, please be aware that UAL thinks it has the liquidity to get through this.

Thus, everybody should listen to recent the investor conference call.

https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/js6ap6iv

When you listen, please note that UAL has $8B in liquidity and $20B in unencumbered assets.

In contrast, UAL had $1.3B in cash on the morning of 9/11. And in the 2008-2009 crisis both UAL and CAL had zero unencumbered assets. This is a financial nightmare scenario but we are at a totally different financial starting point.

The union has been through all this before and has financial experts on staff. We don’t need to be speculating on what “we” “need” to give.

The MC and MEC have all the information and tools necessary to represent us.