United Airlines' Employee Lottery On 'Pause' After Fierce Backlash

[brooklynite]

Investors Business Daily:

United Airlines (UAL) on Monday said it was "pressing the pause button" on a lottery-like program that was set to replace its quarterly bonus program, a move that angered many employees.

"Our intention was to introduce a better, more exciting program, but we misjudged how these changes would be received by many of you," President Scott Kirby said in a message to employees.

"So, we are pressing the pause button on these changes to review your feedback and consider the right way to move ahead," the message continued. "We will be reaching out to work groups across the company, and the changes we make will better reflect your feedback."

The conflict began out in the open last week, after the Chicago Business Journal reported that United was eliminating the performance bonuses eligible employees had been receiving each quarter and replacing them with a program called core4 Score Rewards.

[Initech]

1. Fuck rewards programs.

[uppityperson]

2. Rather than give everyone a small bonus, give 1 a big one and the rest nothing

They were surprised at the backlash? Idiots.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. That's a common model. Give 1 a big bonus.

The "1" being the CEO.

[Flaleftist]

3. Then they can do both. They can afford it with their new tax breaks. nt

[Hav]

5. At first I thought these lottery winnings would be in addition to normal rewards

There is something disrespectful about it to make a game out of it with expensive cars and high money prizes. I think this is something that most employees can relate to and that CEO-types/department managers cannot understand when they come up with ideas like this.

[Merlot]

6. They come up with these ideas on purpose

If they can find a way to insult their workers and treat them like game show contestents while saving money, all the better.

Now what they'll do is "pause" this program, then come up with one that gives out much much smaller bonuses. "See, we listened, you didn't like the lottery."

I worked at an airline that gave out bonuses of $500 for cost saving ideas that they implimented. One was a good one, stop serving ice cream sandwiches that are covered in chocolate becasue the chocolate got on the the upholstry. That person deserved their $500. Another guy who was (oddly enough) only there a couple months suggested cutting health benefits for part-timers. I remember him smiling as he tod how he suggested it. No one smiled back. He took his $500 and left. I always wondered if he was a plant by the company to shift the blame from them taking away health care.

And let that be a lesson to all of you who have jobs with insurance benefits...they can go away.

[47of74]

7. United reaching out to work groups? Full of plants and other flunkies, I take it.

They won't listen worth a shit to the people who actually work on the front lines day in and out.

United Airlines is living up to its name today--at least in that its employees seem almost universally united in their opposition to the airline's new "lottery bonus" program.

To put it lightly, United pilots, flight attendants, and other employees are up in arms. A number of employees reached out to me directly, and to my colleague Chris Matyszczyk, who pointed out just how badly botched the rollout was.

These were posted on the internal United Airlines employee website, Flying Together. Of roughly 500 comments I read, four were positive (and three of those were from the company's vice president for human resources, responding to the negative comments).

The tone ranged from polite disagreement to apoplectic anger.