United Airlines replaces employee bonuses with lottery-style prizes

United Airlines employees hopeful for an early-year boost to their paychecks are waking up to some unfortunate news after United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby revealed that the airline is doing away with performance bonuses in favour of rolling out an "exciting" raffle-style incentive programme, reports travelpulse.com.
The details, released in an internal memo acquired by The Chicago Business Journal, include a quarterly raffle-style giveaway. One lucky employee per quarter will take home a grand prize of $100,000 while others could win smaller prizes ranging from $1,000 to $40,000.
"As we look to continue improving, we took a step back and decided to replace the quarterly operational bonus and perfect attendance programmes with an exciting new rewards programme called 'core4 Score Rewards'," Kirby wrote in the memo.
The core4 program was first rolled out by Kirby in January, as an employee incentive to help build up the airline's new, more "caring" image. United, of course, suffered a series of disastrous public relations incidences last year and has been struggling to rebuild its image. Now, however, it looks like quarterly bonuses are being merged into the programme.
Although, the quarterly bonus is separate from the airline's profit-sharing payouts, according to Inc.com, the news seems particularly jarring after Southwest Airlines and American Airlines announced in January that employees will receive a $1,000 bonus, thanks to projected savings from the new tax bill.
In February, Delta announced it would pay more than $1.1 billion in profit sharing bonuses, thanks also in part to tax bill savings-although this is also the fifth consecutive year that Delta has paid employees more than $1 billion in profit sharing.
According to the Chicago Business Journal, the memo has caused a "firestorm" among employees, a decided setback when trying to encourage them to "care" more.
Luxury autos and deluxe vacations will be among the prizes being given away.