United at the trough

So United gets permission to leave the shelter of Chapter 11 ... three years after seeking protection. And some $7 billion in cuts and 1/3 of staff later, we have a healthier airline. Trouble is the fat cats in the executive suite have been helping themselves to equity participation. True, that means that they will only really cash in if the stock prices improves, but even if it drops, the top management of United stand to rake in solid 7 figure windfalls -- running into 8 figures.

There is something just so wrong about this. The airline has only just, like yesterday, been granted leave to emerge from Ch.11, and yet the pigs have nosed their snouts into the equity banquet they so carefully laid out for themselves. What about the thousands of personnel who lost their jobs? What about the pilots taking huge pay cuts for the privilege to continue to work for United. Shouldn't the people that made the sacrifices for the company get s share of the loot?

If this were a couple of years down the road, United stock was soaring, profits pouring in and the enterprise awash in cash, then I'd be all in favor of rewarding the management that turned it around. Getting out of Ch. 11 is not "turning it around," it is more like the notion that Macbeth has stepped out into daylight, his hands covered in the gore of people's aspirations, hopes and dreams. This is immoral. The BoD crap to the tune of "we needed to be able to keep good management around" is EXACTLY the sort of crap that spawned Koslowski, Lay and others. Sarbanes is still a paper tiger.