Tough Job Ahead for New Chief at United

NEW YORK -- Labor leaders and investors gave John Creighton Jr., United Airlines' new chief executive, a firm clap on the back, but the honeymoon may not last long at United, the world's largest and most troubled employee-owned company.

Creighton, who met with United's senior officers Monday and mingled with employees at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, will presumably have to move quickly to stanch losses estimated at $20 million a day. He must also manage the expectations of the labor unions that helped topple his predecessor.

Although Frederick Dubinsky, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association unit at United and a director of the parent UAL Corp., strongly endorsed Creighton in an interview Monday as "the right person for the job," he was cool to the idea of wage concessions. Many analysts think that such concessions are critical to turning United around. "I don't think any employee at United Airlines intends to pay for the right to come to work," Dubinsky said.

Creighton, former chief executive of Weyerhaeuser and a UAL director since 1998, was named UAL's chairman and chief executive in a special session Sunday after the board pressed James Goodwin to resign.

Goodwin, since being named chief executive in 1999, had alienated the company's unions to the point where the board concluded he was not able to lead the company through its current financial crisis.

Creighton, who is 69, is credited with having cut costs and refocused Weyerhaeuser on its core forest products business in his time as chief executive there from 1991 to 1998. In 1994, he introduced a program that resulted in a $600 million increase in operating profit over three years.

A Wall Street analyst praised him for being calm and methodical. But the analyst, who insisted on anonymity, also said that Creighton was cautious and wondered if his style would serve him well at United.

"What was needed at Weyerhaeuser was not what is needed at United," the analyst said. "He could take three years. He didn't have any immediate issues that needed to be dealt with in three months."

Creighton's strongest backer is the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union represents 40,000 United employees, owns about 20 percent of the company and, along with the pilots, has a seat on the UAL board.

The machinists represent about 7,000 Weyerhaeuser workers. It was Thomas Buffenbarger, the union's president, who recommended Creighton as a UAL director.

"We give him high marks for credibility and integrity," Buffenbarger said Monday. "He is a shrewd businessman. He has a faith in his employees. He will work with us. But he expects a full-fledged commitment from our side as well. We are not afraid of that, and that is what makes the relationship work."

But Denny Scott, an economist with the Western Council of Industrial Workers, which represented 3,000 Weyerhaeuser workers when Creighton was there, criticized him for demanding concessions and for fighting union-organizing campaigns.

"The advice I would give workers at United is to be very guarded and to watch very closely," he said.