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While other domestic airlines this week expressed the likelihood of severe cuts to management and administrative staff as a precursor to even more cutbacks to front line staff in the wake of decimated travel, United CEO Scott Kirby insists that the airline will try to avoid furloughs, seeing them as a "temporary solution" that undermines growth when future business takes off. The airline will try to maintain a "flexible cost structure centered on labor" that would help the company to make money even with low levels of traffic. In the process it is negotiating with unions to adjust contracts from a previous reality where recession layoffs were based on business levels dropping 5%, as opposed to today's reality where business levels have dropped 50-70%. Furloughing over 10,000 people would not allow a company to bounce back well when healthy business levels return, due to the loss of experienced, trained people.