It is time for corporate culture at United to change. I too have seen their practice of lying to customers on many occasions. Ever hear of "flight cancelled due to weather at the destination airport" when you can pull up the METARs and TAFs and the conditions are CAVOK? This is done so that compensation does not need to be paid to the PAX for the cancelled flight.
The bottom line is that you may not make money on every flight. Flaunting the law in order to gain the lowest cost passage for a DH crew is an example of this. The founder of the company where I work as an executive once famously said "I would rather lose money than reputation". This is pounded into the employee's brains with each and every mandatory training we receive several times a year.