This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. Daily Frustrations Grow for United's Workers December 5, 2002 By DAVID BARBOZA and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Melanie Strahan has worked as a flight attendant for United Airlines for 40 years. She has logged thousands of miles and poured countless cups of coffee. She now flies the long route to Beijing from Chicago, and wonders whether she will make it to retirement next year as a United employee. She fears that the UAL Corporation, which owns United, will be forced to file for bankruptcy protection and become the latest casualty in an increasingly demoralized travel industry. "I've been through a lot with United," Ms. Strahan said from her home in Chicago. "I worry about retirement benefits, medical benefits." With a bankruptcy filing looming after the federal government rejected United's application for a $1.8 billion loan guarantee last night, thousands of United employees, some 81,000 around the world, according to UAL, are bracing for the worst. The airline is expected to continue to operate even if it files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors, but there could be lost jobs and health benefits, more pilot furloughs and a legion of shattered careers. Through it all, United's employees will continue to work the ticket counters, to check in customers, service planes and land jets in more than 120 cities worldwide. But many of them said that even before the government's decision last night, employee morale had been plummeting. There is now an awful sense of foreboding about the fate of their once-proud airline. "This is absolutely devastating," Sheri Meehleis, a United flight attendant for 31 years, said last night after hearing about the government's rejection. "We've worked so hard to prevent this." Going to work at United is not so easy these days; for United employees, the everyday smiles and customer greetings are a little harder to muster. Pessimism is in the air. "I realize the seriousness of what I do," said David Quinn, 42, a lead mechanic for United at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. "But I'd be lying if I told you having your future on hold isn't having an effect on us. It's a constant sense of frustration that has bled over. It'd be inhuman to say this frustration doesn't come into play." United employees are faced with the daily frustrations that typically come to a company on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet few thought that formerly loyal customers would also lash out. Several customer service agents said that they have heard from frustrated travelers who said that the airline deserves to be in bankruptcy. "We get no respect from management, and now customers are bashing us, saying we're going into bankruptcy," said Vanessa Reneau-Mack, 35, a customer service agent who works the ticket counters at O'Hare. "I'm with business travelers and frequent fliers, and so we're hearing this from even high-profile customers. What we want is respect. And we don't get respect from upper management. It's affecting us." The people who work at United worried after Sept. 11. They changed their lives when new security measures were added. Now, they are bracing for the stiffest change of all - the possibility that United will collapse. In bankruptcy court, United would be free to petition the judge for much deeper cuts in pay and benefits than employees have agreed to until now. Vivian Jackson, who also works in customer service at O'Hare, said that she worried about losing her health benefits. She is 30 and has a 6-month-old child. She's only been with United for three years, but she thought she had a future with the brand-name company. Now, she's not so sure. The company seems to be at war with itself. "This is really personal," she said. "Before it was just the pilots or the mechanics. Now it's a tug of war." Some United employees said that the company had not kept them abreast of the financial crisis, that they got their information from the newspapers or from watching television sets in the employee break room. They chatter while on the employee buses and huddle behind the scenes, whenever there is a lull in airport traffic. Among flight attendants, the talk is of little but job security, said Ryan Murphy, a 27-year-old flight attendant who is based in San Francisco. "It's very demoralizing," Mr. Murphy said. "People are very upset, or are trying to find out the information that they need, trying to make decisions about whether to stay or look for another job now." Without the loan guarantees, United will almost certainly have to seek court protection from its creditors. Ms. Meehleis, the United flight attendant who is also council president of the Association of Flight Attendants in Denver, said the union is "taking hundreds of calls a day" from flight attendants who want to know how they would be affected by a bankruptcy filing or reorganization. The most commonly asked questions are about who will be furloughed when the payroll cuts begin, and what the furlough will be like. "Their questions run the gamut," she said. "What if we go on furlough and then the company goes into bankruptcy? Will the bankruptcy judge say United can't pay my unemployment compensation anymore?" It is hard to answer, because the situation remains so fluid, she said. If United does file for court protection, which now seems inevitable, she said that certain contractual protections that United recently offered employees would no longer be binding. In that case, United could petition the bankruptcy judge to make drastic revisions to its labor agreements. "They could wipe out our work rules," she said. "They could cut our compensation in half. It could be anything. Our work group stands to lose what we fought for 30 years to gain." It may not come to that, but whatever happens, employees know they will lose ground. Already, Mr. Murphy said United is scheduling his trips in ways that bring him home at the end of a shift, evidently to reduce lodging costs. When he has a coast-to-coast flight, United now tacks a short flight onto the beginning or end of it, lengthening his days. "We used to do just one coast-to-coast in a day," he said. "It's like any classic work speed-up, just like in an auto plant." These changes, and the sense that more are coming, appear to have prompted some employees to take early retirement, Ms. Meehleis said. One caller to the Denver union local mentioned that his "seniority number," which ranks the order in which employees can be furloughed, had fallen by 50 points since last week. "That means 50 people have resigned, just earlier this week," she said. "There are people who are able to retire, and because of all this frustration, some people are making that decision. I think it's stress-related. A lot of people are saying, `This is crazy. I'm done.' "For me, as a 31-year flight attendant, if I had the opportunity to retire right now, I would," she added. "There's a lot of angst here." Some of the angriest employees are mechanics like Mr. Quinn, who has worked for United for 17 years. He joined the company after serving in the Air Force. He now heads a mechanics crew that works on 737's and 747's. "We do seat cushions to jet engines to flight controls and automatic pilots," he said. "We do all that." If he stays with United, he may have to wait out an ugly bankruptcy process; if he tried to get a job elsewhere, he would lose his seniority and be forced to take a huge pay cut. "The difference between an American plane and a United plane is basically a paint job," he said. "But if I go to American I'd have to start at the bottom." Some employees have nagging doubts about whether the pain of saving United is being evenly spread. Donald Cone, a baggage handler in Pittsburgh, said he was bothered by the feeling that the cost of keeping United aloft was being borne by employees more than executives. He recalled that in 1993, ground workers like him agreed to do without raises for seven years. "We were promised that in July 2000, we would have a contract to vote on," he said. "It never happened." Instead, he said baggage handlers went for nine years with no pay increase. One finally materialized last summer, but now the talk is of givebacks again. "People from McDonald's, Wal-Mart, even newspaper writers - everybody gets pay raises," Mr. Cone said. "We didn't. Not even a cost of living. So, my question is this: How in the world is United Airlines' trouble associated with labor costs?" Like other employees, Mr. Cone spoke of the satisfaction he had once taken in his work and his association with an international airline. Baggage handlers sometimes ran races against the clock and against one another, Mr. Cone said, loading mountains of freight and luggage onto planes on schedule. "An employee should have pride in their work," he said. "You try to keep that pride up. You try not to be angry. But you just can't keep taking a pounding in the gut. And it's not about money. It's about moral issues." If United files for bankruptcy, it will be Mr. Cone's second experience. He and a number of other baggage and freight handlers in Pittsburgh are former steel workers who lost their jobs when that industry began to crumble a quarter-century ago. Mr. Cone worked for Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel from 1974 until 1986. "I never thought I'd go through this again," he said. "That whole era, I just tried to wipe all that out of my mind. I never dreamed possible in my life that I would experience another Chapter 11." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/business/05CREW.html?ex=1040123858&ei=1&en=68777bb7e639e6da HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company