400th Letter of Charge Email Celebration Incident

December 16, 2005

UPDATE (Dec 22): The VP of Labor Relations has responded to this incident with a letter to AFA.  He appears to be taking the typical 'single action by one supervisor' mantra.  AFA sent back a 2nd letter to him the next day.

 

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Original article below from Dec 16:

Oops.

Representatives of the Labor Relations group from Onboard Service royally screwed themselves by accidentally sending an e-mail to ORD Flight Attendants which was intended to go to the Supervisor group in ORDSW.  And it wasn't just any email.  It congratulates the ORDSW Supervisors for issuing a "milestone" 400th Letter of Charge while noting that they still have "two more weeks before the year is over."   Yeah, it really said that.

A copy of "Email for Dummies" should be sent via overnight mail to those individuals.  You see kids, they got caught red-handed because they didn't bother to check the group email sending address display before their excited little fingers merrily clicked SEND.  Once that email went out to all the ORD flight attendants, it was too late to try and get it back three hours later.

Oops.

Isn't it reasonable to now suspect that anyone who received a Letter of Charge might have gotten the LOC because of a supervisor's desire to meet disciplinary target numbers?  I wonder what those Supervisors receive if they do make quota by the end of the year. A bottle of champagne?  $1000.00?  A box of chips and salsa?  The ORDSW Labor Relations "Group" should be ashamed of themselves.

This 400th Letter of Charge Milestone Celebration incident demonstrates a very sick and nasty side of certain United Airlines employees.  And quite frankly, perhaps it's time for them to go.  I'm certainly ashamed to work in the same company as them.

Now what?

United should do three things to fix this:

1. Suspend those individuals immediately without pay/bonuses during an investigation into this little LOC piss contest, as well as have the Senior Vice President issue a written apology to all flight attendants.  Heck, she issued an apology for a bathroom comment; she can certainly take care of this insulting incident.
2. Review with the flight attendant Union each and every Letter of Charge incident issued from the date those email Bobbsey Twins began their tenure at United in their current position of employment.
3. Teach Supervisors how to use email.  It isn't rocket science folks.  Welcome to basic Email 101!  Don't send out a message to a large group list without checking the address field to ensure that it doesn't get sent to grp-ORDSW-all@united.com.  Hello?  Ya think?

If United is going to be expecting us to move forward electronically, then they should lead by example and learn how to use basic email properly.  Yeah, it really was no surprise to me to learn that they are excited about quota goals with F/A Letters of Charge.  Are you surprised?  Really? 

Bottom line: an email like this should never have gone out.  Now they've painted themselves in a corner, as well as managed to hurt and insult a lot of flight attendants in the process.  Nice job folks.  Way to go computer geniuses.

Unbelievable.

 

The Email:

Oops.  And here's this individual 3-hours later trying to undo their action.  Sorry, Charlie, doesn't work that way in life.  No undo.  No can do.

Trying to Recall the Email:

Game over.  You lose.