CHICAGO-
Reopened negotiations for new labor contracts is among the demands outlined by the chairman of United Airlines’ unionized pilots in a scathing letter sent to the chairman and CEO of United parent UAL Corp.
The letter, dated Tuesday and written by pilot Mark Bathurst, who also is on the board of directors at UAL, described a company that “lags behind its peers by most measures” and is “not in a good place.”
The company’s current contracts with pilots and other employees expire in late 2009. In the letter, Bathurst asks for contracts to be reopened “August 1, 2007 with the goal of putting new agreements in place for every union by February 1, 2008 the second anniversary of our emergence from Chapter 11.”
The company emerged from bankruptcy last year. Chairman and CEO Glenn Tilton oversaw the three-year bankruptcy restructuring at United and has made the company more cost-effective and smaller.
In the letter, Bathurst, chairman of the United Master Executive Council of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), writes that the carrier hovers near the bottom of airline quality surveys and its profitability lags.
The confrontational letter isn’t completely unexpected.
Earlier this month, more than 200 flight attendants and other uniformed employees protested outside the annual shareholder meeting. Inside the meeting, other employees challenged Tilton over what they considered excessive pay for the company’s top executives.
Tilton received compensation worth $39.7 million in 2006.
“We’ve run into a great deal of frustration,” said Steve Derebey, a spokesman for the United chapter of the ALPA on Wednesday. “People have not been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bathurst’s letter also asks for a management team that can “can get the job done” and requests that Tilton to meet with union leaders and listen to concerns.
“We worked cooperatively with our unions to reach our current agreements, and we look forward to doing so again at the amendable dates,” United spokeswoman Jean Medina said in a statement Wednesday.
