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Comment by dsacco | Hacker News Reader

This was a fascinating read. The money quote, in summary form:

* The flight was technically a Republic Airlines flight subcontracting for United Airlines.

* Almost none of the staff involved worked directly for United Airlines; they are subcontractors required to wear United Airlines' branded uniforms.

* Republic Airlines is bankrupt, and none of the parties involved in the lawsuit has attempted to shift blame to them.

* United Airlines is capable of bypassing union wage requirements by subcontracting through partner airlines, so they have a vested interest in keeping Republic afloat through its bankruptcy (and therefore, discreetly accepting blame).

* The plaintiffs have a vested interest in suing United Airlines, not Republic, because Republic would likely be shielded from paying much if anything due to its current financial standing.

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The infuriating thing about all of this is how deliberately obfuscated and phony everything is:

* Airline employees who aren't quite airline employees

* Cops who aren't quite cops

* Reserved seats that aren't quite reserved

Doesn't anyone honestly sell a real product that you can take at face value anymore?

This rubbish is everywhere. Contract cleaning (offices etc) for instance, used to be a profitable small business. Not enough to be rich, but enough for a big house with some decent amenities and to raise a family on a single income. Then in the 90's these gigs went into a pyramid of contracting and sub contracting companies where the company buying the service is paying more but the grunt doing the work is lucky to be on minimum wage.

At a time where small business software should have been making these middle men completely useless they were getting bigger than ever.

I can vouch for this story. My parents went through this scenario exactly. They had gotten into office cleaning because it was relatively well paying in the 90's. But in the 90's middle men came into the mix.

Someone with better sales ability would win the contract for cleaning office, and subcontract it to someone else. And even that 2nd person might subcontract it to someone else. Eventually, the person really doing the actual cleaning barely made above minimum wage.

What does MBA school call this? Reducing cost? Increasing efficiency? Reducing risk?

Intrigued by how can it be cost competitive for the middle men, why aren't small business selling directly? Is the sales part the only edge of middle men?

Because a small company has the ability to supply cleaning to X square metres across one city.

A middle-man can say "We will supply your cleaning in several cities no matter your office size."

So a company pays a higher cost - but only has to deal with one contract, which saves them effort elsewhere.

It's the same as taxi companies. It would be cheaper for you to call a small firm with lower overheads, but you're happy to pay a premium for convenience.

Hmm, Uber for office cleaning?

So the yellow pages was basically just an uber uber?

A lot of this played out with single location companies and single city contracting companies (before they start merging). So I don't think that's the reason.

I suspect it was cost. The middle men would just under bid and then under deliver.

You need the pigs. They're helping all the animals. That horse isn't really going to the glue factory. We just reused that glue factory truck, but really he was going to a retirement home (paraphrasing Orwell's Animal Farm).

When people plant themselves in the middle, they essentially sell themselves as being necessary. Are they necessary? It depends .. but usually not.

Middleman have some utility but I think often they extract more money than the value they provide.

I see it in a slightly different angle, it is the company's Chief Officer for Cleaning Matters ;) that manages to work less (have convenience) at the expense of the company which pays more money for the service (besides the wage of the COCM ). Coincidentally that is also the same person that will convince everyone else in the company on how convenient the "global" contract is.

There are a lot of activities for which sub-contracting makes sense, particularly when there are possible economies of scale, but when the activity is merely (or largely) labour, there are only four possible overall outcomes:

1) the actual workers are paid less than what would be fair

2) the service is inferior to what was expected/agreed upon

3) the service costs more (the middlemen somehow have to take their part)

4) the contractor or sub-contractor has made wrong estimation of the costs and before or later they close or go bankrupt

>So a company pays a higher cost - but only has to deal with one contract, which saves them effort elsewhere.

They have fewer contracts at any given time but also the contracts can last longer.

If I directly hire people to clean an office, when they don't want to do it anymore I need to find other people to do it. Selecting people, negotiating, getting payments set up with accounting etc. Its a distraction from more important stuff so I want to do this as rarely as possible.

If I hire a company/agency/middleman they can replace people without me having to even be aware its happening. At the point "keep the office clean" is essentially solved. Its possible I will never need to think about office cleaning ever again and I can get on with running my business.

That is a nice example of why the free market is not neccessarily the guarantor of efficiency.

But why? It exactly looks like a problem that free market should be able to solve.

I am not an economist, but I think it is a problem with information assymetry. The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have. The middle men can leverage this situation to gain the profit, the cleaning worker would have gained. But I have no idea, why this would evolve into a pyramid scheme. One level of "management" would have solved the "information assymetry"-problem, without inefficiency (and this could be done in a fair way, so the worker can profit too).

> The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services

I think you might of hit on a possible explanation there, maybe it's wealth inequality? When there was more equality that CEO (or company owner, or just someone near the top) might have been going to the same bars or been part of the same local sports clubs as the cleaner, their kids might have gone to the same school. Now they probably live in other parts of the city.

Politics lately has been an example of this divide.

> might have been going to the same bars or been part of the same local sports clubs as the cleaner, their kids might have gone to the same school. Now they probably live in other parts of the city.

I don't think this ever the case, in any era. Rich people in many countries definitely send their kids to posh schools through their connections (e.g. slots available for those with a parent who attended), go to different bars and follow different sports (e.g. rugby union vs football/soccer, depending on the country obviously).

>Rich people in many countries definitely send their kids to posh schools through their connections (e.g. slots available for those with a parent who attended), go to different bars and follow different sports (e.g. rugby union vs football/soccer, depending on the country obviously).

Yes, but company owners in many countries weren't that rich that the other people they provided services to. Consider a company with 10-20-100 people, serving a city.

Now, those jobs go to huge conglomerates and companies with 1000s upon 1000s of employees, and CEOs that are 100x as rich as the people buying their services.

I'm not thinking CEO of MEGCORP here, but a typical business owner or office manager of a 5-50 person office, they aren't so detached. I'm not sure which end of the wealth divide the fall on though.

Not a free market if there is information assymetry, it's there in the first paragraph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

It says that there is a less assuming version, but I'd always heard the information thing.

Since there is inevitably going to be information asymmetry, this is rather a "no true scotsman" approach to redirecting blame away for the problems that plague free markets in the real world.

"I support our free market! But since our free market isn't really a free market, I'm still right and it's not my fault if things go wrong!"

Well, if that is the case, the free market is a pureley theoretical concept, that is not realized anywhere in the world. And it cannot be realized, because there is always inevitable some form of information assymetry.

economics 101 right here. free market is a theoretical model.

Something can be a theoretical concept and still useful. For politics you might want to favour transparency instead of obscurity.

As an employee in software I've been working through intermediaries for a good part of my career, so obviously interested.

I suspect that, at least in my country, it's more a matter of bad regulation than of information assymetry. But the mere fact that we're not sure which are the causes is in itself information assymetry.

> The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have.

Bingo.

Additionally, in many cases the person/team carrying out a procurement process may require (often by law or company policy) a ridiculous set of documents that some sleazy company is an expert in navigating, and exploiting any loopholes or poorly-written selection criteria. They deliver crap service that barely qualifies, but the procurement person/team can say, "well technically they fit the criteria" so their ass is covered. The procurement team is not rewarded for selecting the best candidate, so they minimise their own exposure.

Also the problem is in many businesses the person choosing the cleaning company isn't spending their own money. So if company A is more expensive but Company B will take more effort to onboard due to the fact they aren't familiar with the paperwork. The employee (often on salary for unlimited hours) will pick the easier option.

Another reason to support small businesses, it helps keep markets honest.

Markets exist to magnify political inequalities, not to deliver cost-effective and efficient solutions.

Businesses don't compete for customers. They compete for investor and shareholder cash. For most businesses, the point of optimum return for investors is in a completely different part of the graph to the points that keep customers happy and employees secure and well-paid.

Because "free market" in practice means "what the big fish allow to happen with the help from their friends at office".

The only one who can guarantee a free market (e.g. big players not monopolizing, abusing their position, underbidding and then killing small more efficient players, etc) is the government/law.

But the government is also often in the hands of big players, and passes laws to their favor.

And even when it isn't, they have the upper edge in other ways (purchasing and negotiating power, better lawyers, more money to burn, etc).

Heck, even the simple fact that "bigger player = more advertising money" can make free competition from a newcomer a non-starter. Even if the new company can make something for cheaper (despite the better economies of scale of the big players) people don't buy cheaper, they mostly buy what they know.

Hence, free market is a myth, perhaps even more so than communism.

The free market is only efficient when

- property rights exist, and are enforced

- there are few barriers to entry

- transaction costs are low

My money's on transaction cost issues. BigCorp has teams of people dedicated to making customer acquisition more effective and efficient.

A free market doesn't guarantee a free society. Over time, people who have more political power can deny that to others, forming de-facto monarchies and serfdoms.

Don't forget that the state humanity started from was a totally free deregulated market, the consequences of which was the formation of tribes ruled by the strongest, most vicious guy and his spear-happy friends. When you don't have regulations, the person with the most power can impose their regulations.

Read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." I cannot endorse this book enough. It is the most influential non-fiction book I've ever read.

Basically it's called using money as a means to make money, and this was frowned upon in many civilisations. Even today, in much of the Muslim world they do not charge interest. They do have higher bank fees (no free accounts, no free checking or electronic transfers).

Keep in mind if we travelled back in time even 100 years ago, charging 29.9% interest would be far beyond the limit of usury.

Today in the western world, we accept the idea of being able simply move around money as a career that is beneficial to society, versus simply using money for trade and exchange. I really think this is one of the worst things we could have accepted as being morally acceptable. Board executives at JPMorgan Chase, PNC and the other banks that caused so much destruction in 2008 should have been thrown in jail next to rapists, paedophiles and murders. Instead they destroyed thousands of lives and made off with millions in bonuses.

> Board executives at JPMorgan Chase, PNC and the other banks that caused so much destruction in 2008 should have been thrown in jail next to rapists, paedophiles and murders.

What strange ideas of justice the world has!

In an ostensibly advanced country, America, one side of the political spectrum would be have us remain willfully oblivious to police abuses, corrupt prosecutors withholding or fabricating evidence, and the systematic dehumanization not simply of prisoners, but of any peripherally involved with the machinery criminal justice system, especially for the purpose of deporting undesirables.

(The prison guards who put an inmate in the shower and turned on the hot water until the skin was peeling off his corpse? Normal. The immigrant detained by ICE for months and months, given aspirin for his developing penis cancer despite agency doctors' recommendation to get him to a proper examination until it was far, far too late? Incredibly normal. Predates Trump.)

The other side of this political spectrum skims over meaningful questions of actual fraudulent or unethical business practices, issuing instead a blanket equation of the practice of making loans to people who assumed their house would apprecuate in value with crimes such as murder and child abuse.

And these aren't even extremes. Both positions are pretty mainstream, real crowd-pleasers.

What the hell is wrong with us? Can we not aspire to build a world where there is actual justice, and not mere retribution against our political foes and other un-persons?

The bankers did more than make shaky loans. In some cases they committed actual fraud, amounting to billions of dollars, which had effects like wiping out people's retirement accounts.

I think you're right that they deserve less punishment than murderers. But what they got is less punishment than some people get for standing on the wrong street corner.

For details, on both the bankers and the people on street corners, see The Divide by Matt Taibbi.

A murder destroys a single life, or handful of lives, directly. Is a bank executive who wilfully commits fraud that damages million of lives better or far worse?

Regardless of how bad it is (and I do think there are arguments to be made both ways), being allowed to effectively escape punishment because the distributed nature of the crime makes it hard to comprehend its real impact is both wrong and damaging to society in the long run.

What you're implicitly arguing is that since we don't prosecute injustice evenly, we shouldn't prosecute injustice at all. There's always going to be something worse happening, it shouldn't distract us from doing what is right. You could easily make the argument that since we allow North Korea to have prison camps, we can't throw murderers into prison because actual justice doesn't exist evenly around the world.

Also finish the food on your plate, there are starving kids in Africa.

>Basically it's called using money as a means to make money, and this was frowned upon in many civilisations.

I was watching the history of York castle on Netflix. In England the Christian people wouldn't charge interest on loans but the small Jewish community did, I assume it meant a person could borrow more?

Anyway there was a huge riot by the Christian townsfolk they wanted to kill the Jewish men, women and children. Which also meant all debts held in Jewish books were wiped out.

All the Jewish people of York took refuge in the York castle keep but in the end were going to be killed by the people of York. The men slit the throats of their wives and children then the mend committed suicide.

http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/norman/the-1190-massa...

> I assume it meant a person could borrow more?

It meant the lender was more willing to lend. The lender could make a business of lending if he charged interest, and not if he did not.

> What does MBA school call this? Reducing cost?

it's called making money on someone else's dime!

Everything is marketing bullshit - I spent a decade running an ecommerce agency and got to see the bellies of many beasts.

For instance, there's a pig related tea brand in the UK which is universally seen as funky and independent and all that shite. They're owned by tetley, who are in turn owned by tata. The ownership structure is sufficiently complex to make them look independent - but they aren't. It's just good marketing.

Either way, this is just one of many examples that spring to mind - oh, also, call centres - in the U.K. you can call pretty much any large business you like and you'll be talking to one of two huge call centre operators.

Then... where do you draw the line? Is private equity backing problematic when its obfuscated? Or just contract primacy?

Oh, TeaPigs? With the dachshund mascot on the Darjeeling Earl Grey, and the brown-paper boxes, and the overpriced wares? Yeah, you can get those everywhere; they're clearly _way_ too mass-market to be properly independent. If you're spending cash money the on indie feel of things, you'll be buying BigCorp sooner or later. Better to just buy quality.

> Then... where do you draw the line? Is private equity backing problematic when its obfuscated? Or just contract primacy?

Well, we're taught that the free market is efficient only when you have property rights, low barriers to entry, and low transaction costs. While monopoly issues get most of the antitrust press, I suspect that a lot of the other things people don't like about BigCorp world and the gig economy is the way that high transaction costs around hiring, firing, and most especially, contracts of all sorts. Any time these issues are complex and involve expensive lawyers, BigCorp tends to win. It's at the roots of a lot of problems these days.

Yeah, them - they're essentially an independent business unit of Tata global.

One thing that I found consistently interesting was that more often than not, their employees thought they were working for a small, independent business - and the principles would often use "we're only little" in negotiations.

When you manufacture a reality for long enough it becomes real - at least, real enough in the minds of beholders that any opposing reality is dismissed as priggish or jealous.

> If you're spending cash money the on indie feel of things, you'll be buying BigCorp sooner or later. Better to just buy quality.

Most of these start out as quality. Then what happens is that during some survey BigCorp finds out that SmallQualityCorp is nibbling away at their sales & profits and then the next thing you know SmallQualityCorp has been acquired by BigCorp.

See: Snapple

Although what you find frequently is that SmallQualityCorp was started by BigCorp at arms length with a view to bringing them under the umbrella once they have traction.

"Sports nutrition" (the "what the hell do we do with all this cheese making byproduct industry") is rife with this - there are only two suppliers, and many, many brands and offshoots. It happens in retail, too - you see a single entity pushing multiple seemingly independent brands to target different market segments.

Then how is MyProtein so much cheaper than like everyone else?

Volume over per-sale margin. It's the exact same stuff from the same suppliers as you'd get buying a premium brand like Sci-MX etc.

> in the U.K. you can call pretty much any large business you like and you'll be talking to one of two huge call centre operators.

And whose employees aren't even near the UK. Call centers are some of the most easily outsourced jobs. And what with the UK having exported the ability to communicate fluently in English through its many years of empire building they've only themselves to blame for that one.

Actually, over the past few years you've probably found more British accents than not - because they are using domestic prison labour at an increasing rate.

Oh, for added gags, one of the massive call centre operators (Serco) also operates prisons, which have quietly gone private over the last decades.

Wow.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/aug/08/prisoners-ca...

> Oh, for added gags, one of the massive call centre operators (Serco) also operates prisons, which have quietly gone private over the last decades.

That's disgusting and ought to be illegal.

Please tell me you the ToS for every online service, every time it's updated. The internet-enabled side of industry virtually invented this modus operandi.

> The internet-enabled side of industry virtually

I see what you did there.

Are Internet services even obligated to notify you when they change their ToS, or do I really have to run a script every night that diffs the current ToS with last recorded one, for every service I use?

Microsoft employees that aren't Microsoft employees..

Yep, Wipro, Experis and Unisys are popular now for MSFT.

Contracted pilots are often paid peanuts too. Some non-union pilots are even on food stamps. They might even be better off driving for Uber, and that's kinda terrible.

This is crazy! Any sources for this?

http://www.pilotjobsnetwork.com/jobs/Mesa - First Officer (copilot) in their first year at the company makes $19/hour, and is guaranteed 76 hours/month. Equates to $17,328 pre-tax. It's why so many regional pilots commute, because they can't afford to live near the major airport which they're based at. The result is fatigued or sick (no pay if you call in sick) pilots operating these flights.

But hey, supply and demand. They wouldn't be able to pay so little if pilots weren't applying, and that won't change anytime soon because flying at a regional for a few years is a way to build hours and move on up to the mainline airline.

I'm pretty sure that "per hour" is "block hours", such that they are paid only when the door shuts.

So there's a fair amount of waiting around that's uncompensated. There is a per-diem, but I don't think it goes beyond average cost for meals, lodging, etc.

Their actual typical monthly hours would be more informative than their contractual guarantee.

Looks like the actual total at Mesa (including per diems, etc.) was $20,183 last year[1].

[1] https://www.alpa.org/news-and-events/news-room/2016-08-16-st...

It says on that chart that they did the same thing as your above comment, multiplying the guaranteed hours by the minimum hourly wage.

It could well be that they all work the minimum hours. I doubt it, this would be more expensive for the airline.

Well they're limited by the FAA to 1000 hours / year, so they'd have to be averaging 83 hours/month at most.

> Doesn't anyone honestly sell a real product that you can take at face value anymore?

It's all about risk. Outsourcing means companies transfer risk to other parties. Governments love to do it too, that's why entities like the EU are given sovereign power or public transport is privatised. What's this? A train crashed because of a poorly maintained rail? Scheduled maintenance overran and commuters are angry? The power grid is experiencing brown outs because there's not enough power stations? Sorry, that third party is to blame... bad third party! I totally understand why it's annoying, but I have nothing to do with third party etc.

So in a way, United taking the blame for these things is refreshing. They are treating the outsourcing as their own responsibility.

> refreshing

sigh

> they have a vested interest in keeping Republic afloat through its bankruptcy (and therefore, discreetly accepting blame)

Since Republic is contracting for United, United is probably liable under vicarious liability principles anyway, so conspiracy theories about why they don't try to deflect blame aren't really needed.

Agreed, but I was reiterating the author's (admittedly speculative) point here. It is interesting even if it's not conclusive; the incentive is at least there, if not the intention.

That said, I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory. I'd call it shrewd business acumen. If the law permits you to reduce your costs using contracted third parties, you'll likely avail yourself of the opportunity when shareholders are demanding returns. It sounds sensational, but I think it's really quite mundane.

Conversely, it's common for contracting firms to include a clause requiring the subcontracting firm to indemnify the contractor. So United would be able to push it back onto Republic.

Wouldn't that still leave United liable, and only obligate Republic to pay United for their loss?

Probably leaves United in a bad spot, considering Republic is bankrupt and United depends on them for services.

That clause is unlikely to hold against litigation on grounds that the paying customer was given the deliberate impression that he/she was entering into a contract agreement with United.

Unless of course the ticket contract with paying customers makes it a clause that United isn't responsible.

Indemnification wouldn't eliminate United's liability, it would just entitle United to sue Republic for reimbursement for whatever it had to pay. Which, given Republic's bankruptcy, puts United in the same problematic spot a victim would be in if they had to sue only Republic and United wasn't liable under repsondeat superior.

I also read this author's post about bankrupt airlines. I've always been aware of the subcontracted airlines (often I'd see two flight numbers rotating on the same screen or somewhere it would say X operated by Y) but I never stopped to think if I should check if one of those is actually bankrupt.

I don't fly within the US just because fuck the TSA (I'll take a train to Canada if I need to fly internationally), but I'm going to be more careful now about checking the subcontracted airline to make sure they're not in bankruptcy.

I don't think "X operated by Y" means subcontracted or that it implies that X is in bankruptcy. Companies do this all the time, one example is when you buy a multi-leg flight. They partner other airlines because they dont have a license to do one of the legs.

I might be completely wrong but thats what I always though, please correct me.

oh it doesn't, but in this particular case, Republic was contracted by United and they are bankrupt.

I was implying that if you see tickets and they're subcontracted to another airline, look up that airline and don't book if they're bankrupt.

How can a bankrupt airline still be flying?

The whole thing really exposes the cracks and deliberate obfuscation in an industry I thought would be regulated like crazy.

There are several kinds of bankruptcy. One is the kind you're thinking of, where whatever's left is divided up and given to creditors. Another provides a sort of time-out for the business to work its problems out without creditors hassling them. When a business "emerges" from bankruptcy it's a successful conclusion of that second kind.

There are more kinds.

It is "regulated like crazy", by corrupted politicians like David Samson.

United even created his own route from Newark to SC so he can fly home...

In January 2015, federal prosecutors subpoenaed records related to Samson's personal travel, and his relationship with Newark Liberty International Airport's largest carrier, United Airlines, as part of a probe into a flight route initiated by United while Samson was chairman of the transportation agency that operates the region's airports. The route provided non-stop service between Newark and Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina, located about 50 miles from a home where Samson often spent weekends. United halted the non-stop route on April 1, 2014, three days after Samson resigned from the position. Samson referred to the twice-a-week route — with a flight leaving Newark on Thursday evenings and another returning on Monday mornings — as “the chairman’s flight.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Samson_(lawyer)

> Samson was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and sentenced to a year of home confinement at the South Carolina vacation house that was subject of the crime

This really shouldn't amaze me anymore, but it still does. The justice system is a very different place depending on the amount of money and power you have.

So in today's capitalism, you can shift and dilute the blame so much, that you can literally beat up your customers.

>discreetly accepting blame

Have you seen the news and social media lately? United has been the butt of the blame "discreetly" the way James Bond making his way from point A to point B in a city while blowing up, crashing, and destroying everything in his path is "discreet".

Can you honestly name or a remember a PR disaster as bad as this one about any company in the past two years?

I would phrase it as "loudly and publicly accepting blame and a tremendous backlash".

Can you honestly name or a remember a PR disaster as bad as this one about any company in the past two years?

Volkswagen was probably just as bad at the time. Now of course most people have kind of forgotten or at least moved on and VW just posted strong Q1 results, handily beating estimates.

Glad you brought that up. VW has even less to do with the dieselgate scandal than UA has with this O'Hare incident. VW uses engines and engine software parametrization from Audi. Audi uses engine software and esp. the cheating device from Bosch. Everyone else also uses it. But VW being the biggest of them all is getting the blame and has to pay the fine.

The VW group owns Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, SEAT, ...

If I remember correctly the Bosch cheating software was there for testing purposes but VW asked Bosch to leave it.

> Everyone else also uses it

No. Some companies optimize their engine to have optimal emissions in the exact conditions of the emissions test, but no other company has been found to have an actual digital switch modifying the engine's behavior only during the emissions test.

Get yourself educated and watch the relevant CCC talk please.

Oh my. Audi is the engineering part of VW, VW the low quality, mass market part of the brand. Engines are developed at Audi, they are the engineers after all, VW is a logistics and support company.

Porsche is the owner of the VW group. They bought most of the controlling stock.

Since everybody uses Bosch ECU's and most of the companies knew about this cheating low temp. switch in the ECU parametrization, it is no surprise that most of them have been caught using it. It is not illegal in Europe though, because laws are different here.

The only surprise is that media is ignoring it, and blaming VW who would be the last to blame.

> Can you honestly name or a remember a PR disaster as bad as this one about any company in the past two years?

There was one, funnily enough much of the bad PR was doled out by the airlines: samsung. Everyone that went though an airport got to hear "samsung galaxy devices are not allowed on this plane".

> discreetly accepting blame

GP isn't suggesting there isn't any blame, but that United is low-key accepting the blame/'taking one for the team'. United has decided not to throw any of the involved parties under the bus, even though it is likely that most of them - possibly all of them - do not work directly for United.

This makes no sense to me. The subcontracted brands are worthless, like actually bankrupt, and nobody knows them. Why take the brand hit on "United"? I wouldn't call it "throwing them under the bus" to at least mention this. The amount of backlash against United and its brand is hideous.

It makes the brand look even worse if they refuse to accept responsibility for something that was ultimately their decision. It's their supplier [contractor].

> Why take the brand hit on "United"?

Maybe because United badly wants Republic to not go into liquidation? As to how badly - the dollar value is the difference between how much United is paying to contract versus how much they would have to pay their own Union staff.

Jesus! So far I naively thought that the rotting of commercial flying in America is created only by corrupted politicians who instead of forcing Government to investigate price fixing by major airlines, look somewhere else (over the last 5 years my summer ticket to europe went up about 10% Y/Y; meanwhile oil price went down some 40%, clearly there is a fix as oppose to gas stations where price of gallon follows cruide oil ups and downs). But this crazy trick of working with bankrupt company to avoid union that's pure devil's genius!

I can only pray someone from the Committee they meeting on soon read this or the article and can actually inquiry about this when they have a chance!

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