[quote="LaLou"In my opinion, if a plane is overbooked, which should not happen, the last passengers to arrive have to reschedule their flight, even if they are employees of the airline involved. [/quote]
While I agree with this, it's a little more complicated than "just reschedule their flight", because, the reason they needed to get on the plane was because they were needed to crew an uncrewed flight. If they hadn't been on that specific flight, the plane they were supposed to crew the next day would have been uncrewed, and would have caused an entire flight to cancel.
Also, since these crew members that boarded last minute, didn't have a ticket, the plane, according to United, wasn't "overbooked" or "oversold"
That being said, I do still agree with you that they should have handled the situation better.
I have sources this time.