LUV conducts quarterly scheduled – training- and fun weekends- with their regional management and union personnel. (like a weekend in PHX – training and communication with ground and FA personnel and regional management personnel – on Saturday.

nice party – good people bonding time – on Saturday night.

Recap meeting – notes and assignments – and send everyone home by 1200 Sunday.

And then follow up communication on the content and assignments from the meeting.

LUV spends the most training/education money per employee of the US carriers.

An investment by both parties.

Continental began picking up several of these LUV initiatives when Gordon Beutheum (sic) took over. And they continue measuring what is important

· To the customer

· To the ASM cost

And then visibly reward employees for superior performance.

When I worked at UAL in the early to mid-1970’s – Eddie Carlson – new CEO (no airline experience – ran the highly successful Westin Hotel UAL sub) – visited all of the UAL facilities and held “town hall” meetings – including – notes – assignments – and feedback (note above) – and helped to re-align the UAL management and employees.

Frank Borman tried the same at Eastern. But they were “dead – poisoned – and gone – but did not realize it yet” – when he tried.

I wish that I could give Tilton “any benefit of the doubt” about his tenure at UAL. But he has refused to get out of EXO (UAL headquarters) …

· To try to understand the airplane business

· To try to understand the passenger needs

· To try to understand the employee work requirements – and how to help them with technology

His goal has been to “suck up to” the bankruptcy judge – and now the new board – and maximize his (and his lawyer cronies team) take home and retirement pay.

And now that they have extracted the maximum cash that they can suck out of this company – he is preparing to exit before the circus again goes into Chapter 11 in the next 12 months. (But he is rich – and I am not!!)

And UAL will jettison another 5,500 employees under his strategy of trying to “reduce expenses to save themselves” – Damn creative.

EVERY Management needs to talk/listen to employees.

Did not intend this to be a Labor Day blog.

(I was only a union member when I sailed as a deck officer in the Merchant Marine – closed shop.)

Ron Heimburger

heimburger@mindspring.com

Years ago I managed a department that included union-represented employees and salary employees who were not represented. In those days, it may have well been two companies with completely different management styles. The polarization extended all the way down to the way people were treated on a simple, basic, human level. I couldn’t understand why you’d treat people differently.

These days at the company, the union/management relationship isn’t perfect, but it is vastly improved. A large part of the change is through communication between the parties and an increased understanding of mutual goals. There is much more participation by represented employees in the decisions that impact their lives every day.

A possible extreme example of the power of cooperation, communication, and shared interests hit me when I visited a Norwegean division for a three day business training session. It wasn’t until the end of day 2 that I realized one of my classmates was the head of the union. You couldn’t tell him apart from the other participants because he had the same objectives as us members of “the management team.” We were all in it to improve the competitiveness of the business, and it didn’t matter if you were “managememt” or “union.”

It was a beautiful thing. It can be done.

I always thought McCain disliked airline pilots so much because he simply thought he was better than all of them put together.

Maybe he was turned down by United when he applied!

Yes, it would be nice to live in a world where unions were not necessary – but it’s not this world today.