The company today announced the details of salaried and management employees' contribution toward the overall goal of $725 million in average annual labor savings that United needs to maintain adequate cash resources and exit Chapter 11 successfully.

Each labor group's costs-savings goal was allocated based on its percentage of the company's total labor costs for 2004. As part of the shared contributions employees across the company will make, SAM employees will achieve annual average savings of $112 million through permanent wage reductions, benefit changes, and productivity enhancements.

The SAM wage reductions, which take effect Jan. 1, 2005, will be progressive -- meaning the reduction will increase based on an employee's responsibility.

Glenn Tilton and his seven direct reports had previously announced they would take a 15% reduction. Other officers will take a 12% reduction. Management employees will take a 10 percent reduction, and salaried employees will take an 8 percent reduction.

These amounts include a temporary 4% reduction in salary effective from January 1 through our exit from Chapter 11.

In addition, just as we've proposed benefit plan changes to our union-represented employees, the SAM wage reduction will be accompanied by benefit plan changes as well. We're assessing the impact of changes to medical and dental programs, vacation and holiday schedules and sick leave. We'll share these details with you once the plans are finalized.

We'll achieve the final component of the SAM savings through productivity enhancements. To date, we've identified $30 million in savings through the ongoing general administrative or staff function cost-reduction initiative, which is designed to identify ways we can work more efficiently and cost effectively. This initiative will be largely phased in during the first quarter of 2005. In addition, we are in the process of identifying other significant productivity improvements to achieve our SAM savings. The result of all of these productivity improvements will be that we have fewer SAM employees at United.

I know the decisions we are making are difficult for everyone, but they are absolutely necessary. And we will continue to do what we must to ensure that United emerges from bankruptcy as a successful, sustainable and competitive company -- for the long term.

That's all for today. Fly safe and I'll talk with you next week.