'Disgraceful Treatment': Ted Cruz Hammers United Airlines CEO Over Employee Vaccine Mandate

thank you madam chair welcome to each of the witnesses uh as a number of senators have observed last year what congress did with regard to the aviation industry was critical and it was unprecedented uh we allocated over 54 billion dollars to keep the american aviation industry strong and healthy i was the chairman of the aviation subcommittee at the time each of the ceos on this panel and miss nelson i've spoken to all of you many times each of you in on great length making the case that that maintaining our pilots maintaining our flight attendants maintaining our personnel in aviation was critically important we fast forward to where we are today and we find ourselves in a different circumstance and the behavior of airlines has not been uniform um i'm proud to say the two airlines based in texas mr kelly's airline and mr parker's airline i think have been exemplary particularly concerning vaccine mandates both of you have made public commitments that you will not be firing your employees because of failure to comply with the vaccine mandate i thank you for that mr bastian has likewise made that commitment at delta the outlier here is united and mr kirby united's behavior on this issue i have to say has been deeply disturbing i'm a frequent customer of united i live in houston i've got over a million miles on united there are over 14 000 united employees in the state of texas and the way united has treated its employees is in market contrast to your competitors sitting here your competitors have said they will stand with their employees united has not made that same commitment how many pilots has united fired because of failure to comply with the maxine mandate uh well senator uh i'm happy to talk also about the rationale for why we did it we did it for safety i i i have a limited time so my question is how many pilots have you fired i believe it is six out of three and how many pilots have you placed on unpaid leave uh i think it's about 80. okay how many flight attendants have you fired uh i don't know the number in total it's about 200 employees well i will tell you i spoke this morning to the airline employees for health freedom that said they had over 2 000 united employees who had been placed on unpaid leave because they sought exemptions from the vaccine mandate that said that included 331 pilots i will also note that i have been literally inundated with united employees complaining about united's callous disregard for the rights of the pi of the pilots one of the messages was for a pilot who flew for united for more than two decades who applied for and received an exemption from your vaccine mandate on religious grounds and it was subsequently placed on leave with no pay and no benefits including no medical insurance now his wife who relies on her husband's insurance has had to postpone a necessary surgery of with no idea when she'll be able to reschedule because she she has no idea when her husband will be able to fly again and you're simultaneously enforcing a non-compete so this pilot can't even go work for your competitors another message i received from another pilot a constituent self-described proud texan flew for the air force for almost three decades including missions in asia now founds himself on indefinite unpaid leave with a denial of all benefits to include medical dental vision insurance disability travel privileges crew member access to jump seats denied access to his retirement savings this morning i spoke with a 10-year flight attendant for united a woman name is adriana yubali who is a single mom and hispanic single mom from texas who you fired she received her termination notice tied in a trash can to her front gate i have a letter here madam chairman from from uh ms yubali describing the disgraceful treatment she received at the hands of united ask unanimous consent this record to be entered this letter be entered into the record just recently you're being sued by your employees for mistreating them for violating their terms of employment just recently the fifth circuit court of appeals judge james ho someone i know very well an exemplary jurist wrote an opinion in which he described the likelihood of your employees succeeding on the merits as the claims against you quote appear compelling and convincing at this stage and i want to read what judge ho wrote about united title vii forbids employers from retaliating against employees who attempt to exercise their statutory rights yet united ceo scott kirby told employees in a company town hall meeting that quote very few religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate would be granted and that anyone who even attempted to request one would be quote putting their job on the line i saw that video and it's a disturbing video he went on to note this is again judge hoe writing the district court thus concluded that united's mandate reflects an apathy if not antipathy for many of its employees concerns and a dearth of toleration for those expressing a diversity of thought through both its policy and its official statements to employees united has demonstrated a quote calloused approach to and apparent disdain for people of faith why is united's conduct disregarding the rights of your employees so different from the conduct of your competitor airlines which are protecting the rights of their pilots and flight attendants and not firing them or putting them on unpaid leave for exercising their religious liberty rights well senator cruz again we did this for safety uh we believe it saved lives i think that's my number one obligation is safety particularly running an airline and you have an obligation to your customers my number one obligation is safety including to our car are your competitors unsafe i think that the world is safer for us i made the decision for united i'll let the my competitors speak for themselves i made the decision for united uh that getting everyone vaccinated would save lives and mister i will tell you what's my fault but i will tell you this i fly united flight almost every week almost without exception when i'm on one of your flights i get stopped by a pilot or a flight attendant often multiple pilots or multiple flight attendants who say thank you for fighting for us your employees are being mistreated and it's disappointing your company is better than this and what you're doing is wrong senator peters thank you madam chair and uh thank you for all of you for being here today before i ask my questions i just hope everybody in this country actually gets a vaccine i am absolutely tired of this pandemic i'm tired of what we're dealing with we have a tool that works it's safe it's effective and if people take a vaccine we can get through this no one has a right to spread a disease around and get other people sick get a vaccine please let's focus on on that but anyway let me get back to my questions here uh mr lotter um clearly it's essential that the economy can provide good paying jobs for for everybody uh who who wants one uh the aviation industry offers a awful lot of really great opportunities for folks to earn a good living support their families and oftentimes they don't need a college degree in order to get these great jobs and we have to make sure that future generations are able to take advantage of those opportunities that are out there

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 479,898

Keywords: Sen. Ted Cruz, vaccine mandate, Senate

Id: _aD_fGacsHE

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021