United Airlines flight attendants haven’t gotten a raise in five years. Their union agreed to a new contract that was just an inflation adjustment. The union said to take the deal – it was the best they could do – but 71% of United’s flight attendants voted against it.
- The value of their wages had eroded about 25%.
- The new contract provided average increases of less than 27%.
What’s more, many flight attendants felt that,
- They had been promised so much more by the union, including ‘ground pay’ for all the time at the airport both before and between flights.
- The contract language wasn’t strong in some areas, like hotel stays for layovers, and though the union said they’d be getting better hotels the contract guaranteed rooms in merely ‘tenantable condition’
- It’s a good idea to never take the first offer (though the itself union had already rejected many offers).
The union lost much of its leverage with the change in administration – a Biden-controlled National Mediation Board might have been more likely to let them strike (although they’d been unwilling to sign off on other strikes, at least before the election).
And the union read their membership wrong, and communicated with them poorly. How the union chose to parcel out the economic spoils in the new contract didn’t match what flight attendants wanted. So AFA-CWA surveyed their members “to identify the key issues” that crewmembers want.
Paddle Your Own Kanoo flags the focus areas for the union as it returns to the bargaining table to secure a contract:
- Pay for waiting on the ground between flights
- Less tiring red-eye flying
- No more layover notifications
- More rest on longer flights
- Contract compliance guarantees
- Improvements for reserve flight attendants
- Better layover hotels
- Improvements to health care and retirement benefits
Ultimately, if the union believes it already got all the economic value there was to get in the first deal, they’ll need to shift some things around to be able to tell their members they’ve gotten more even without getting materially more. Time passing alone will mean starting in a new year, and a higher wage. So pushing out the start date of the contract will let them report back a bigger percentage increase.
Or they might fold that bigger increase into flat payments for long layovers, to report that they’ve now got ground pay. Meanwhile, ‘contract compliance guarantees’ are in some sense easy. Everyone says they’re going to aide by the contract they’re signing, and there are processes in place to address potential breaches. Just add more of those.
Hopefully this process doesn’t drag on too long because flight attendants at United are now earning far less than their counterparts at American and especially at non-union Delta, where profit-sharing payments continue to put them in an advantaged position.
@Gary if contract compliance guarantees are easy, why were they taken away from FAs to begin with and why does UA not want to give them. What they mean by this is grievance pay, i.e. if the company breaks the contract they have to pay the FA (If the FA breaks the contract they get fired so it seems fair), currently the company breaks the contract hundreds if not thousands of times each month, these get logged as grievances and nothing happens. So why aren’t they going by the last contract they signed?
I do agree with you, why agree to a contract if you’re not going to keep it and just constantly break it, but without guarantees like grievance pay it essentially renders the contract useless as the company can just do what it wants (so hence why it might not be easy for a union to get the company to agree to the guarantees).
I fully support United’s flight attendants and their union; hope they get the new deal that they want and deserve as soon as possible.
The value of EVERYONES wages have decreased by 25%. There will soon be a bunch of NK Ghetto Attendants looking for work. United can use them as replacements.
@1990…Yep, that’s the type of position that many hypocrites would take.
@Mike P — You “doth protest too much, methinks.”
Scott Kirby is a miser of truly epic proportions when it comes to paying his people. For someone who claims to operate the best airline in the history of the world it seems odd that his reputation for being so cheap that he will squeeze a silver dollar until the eagle screams is so accurate. If you have good people, pay them like valued employees.
@Christian — United CEO Scott Kirby received $33,400,000 in 2024.
Average flight attendant salary for United $67K. Pay the FAs more.
Unions should be illegal..
There is an old saying that you can wish in one hand and s*** in the other then see which gets full first.
Pay, some work rules and longer layovers on long-haul flights may be reasonable but the extent of ground pay and asking UA to cut back redeyes (a key part of their operation) are not happening.
Enjoy reduced pay. You lose out every month the negotiated deal isn’t in place.
If they don’t like the pay quit – someone else will willingly take their place.
@Walter Barry — Unions are good for workers and a free society. There’s a reason they were targeted in the ‘30s; it’s because they stand up for their members and against authoritarians.
@Retired Gambler — You don’t care about workers, if you’re advising them to take a bad deal, fast, or quit.