United Airlines Negotiations Crawl Along in Chicago This Week

1 April 2022

This week, the IAM District 141 Negotiations Committee and United negotiators met in Chicago to continue bargaining for new contracts covering over 25,000 United Airlines ground workers. We reported last week that we were not pleased with the pace of negotiations. This week was mostly more of the same, with some small progress made as the week came to a close.

Both the Union and the Company agreed to expedite these talks with a deadline of August 1st to conclude negotiations. At this pace, we will be hard-pressed to meet that deadline. The Union has made several proposals and counter-proposals to the Company regarding issues we view as being simple to resolve. Still, the Company is dragging its feet, and it doesn’t seem they possess the same urgency to produce industry-leading contracts as we do.

In a recent interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, United CEO Scott Kirby stated, “I think the most enduring change that’s going to come from COVID that’ll be most obvious to people in the customer service culture change that’s happened. We had over a 40-point improvement in our net promoter scores. I hear it, like, everywhere I go.” CEO Kirby went on to say, “I actually have the easiest job of anyone at United because I really only have one responsibility, which is to make our employees proud.”

Every IAM member at United Airlines deserves to lead the industry in all aspects of our terms of employment. It’s very obvious that CEO Kirby believes United is the leading global airline. It is also clear that CEO Kirby believes that United employees have led the way in providing United’s top-notch service improvements, which have added value to United’s brand and bottom line.

It’s time for United management to get serious about these expedited negotiations, put their money where their mouths are, and make us proud.

The Union and the Company will meet next the week of April 11th.

In Solidarity,

Michael G. Klemm