In a blunt internal message to employees, United Airlines says it has offered flight attendants the highest pay rates in the industry, but claims union leaders are refusing to agree to the needed tradeoffs. After five years without raises, here’s what’s holding up a deal.
- United Airlines flight attendants haven’t had a raise in 5 years. Their contract has been open.
- The company and union came to a deal that cabin crew rejected.
- Now, the union and the airline are trying to find a way to get a contract done when they’ve already bargained about as far as they could.
- And United has been pretty aggressive messaging directly to employees on where things stand, as they see it.
A week ago the airline messaged a pitch for algorithmic scheduling to gain cost efficiencies that allow for some of the higher pay demands that flight attendants are asking for. The airline has said they’d consider not just ‘boarding pay’ (pioneered by non-union Delta, and now something other contracts are asking for) but actual ‘sit pay’ for time spent in the airport.
If you want to understand ‘PBS scheduling’ I’ve been told this explanation I detailed of what it is, and why airlines like it but (some) flight attendants don’t, is the clearest and most accureate folks have read. However I did leave out that flight attendants can easily ‘dispute’ the schedules they’re given now, when they think they’ve been improperly assigned based on priority, but with less opaque algorithms doing this scheduling this becomes more difficult.
This week, economics were the centerpiece of our AFA negotiating session.
We’re focused on delivering a contract with immediate, industry-leading pay for flight attendants at every step of the pay scale, from new hires to our most senior employees.
United offered a proposal that would deliver the highest flight attendant pay among U.S. carriers. Over the term of the agreement, starting on day one to the amendable date of the contract, pay for EVERY flight attendant at EVERY level would be top of industry.
While we are making real progress on several priority items including sit pay — there does remain a significant gap between our respective positions on how to offset the cost of the AFA’s new proposals.
Throughout these discussions, United has presented solutions and pathways to deliver improvements while keeping the overall agreement balanced, competitive and financially sustainable for our airline. These proposals have been rejected by AFA leadership, and the union has thus far failed to present cost offsets or alternative proposals that would help balance the contract.
We remain committed to reaching an agreement that reflects the quality of your work and one that delivers meaningful improvements. We look forward to continuing discussions on the details of the AFA’s latest proposals, including one on signing bonuses, at our next session scheduled for March 3–6.
Please remember to check our Negotiations Hub, which has previous updates and helpful information addressing frequently asked questions.
Nathan Lopp
VP Labor Relations
The message appears meant to shape rank and file beliefs over who is being reasonable, and pre-frame any slowdown in negotiations over union intransigence (“rejected,” “failed to present cost offsets”).
They’re anchoring to “immediate” and “industry-leading” suggesting that any union demand above the company’s current offer are unreasonable by definition – they’ve “already offered the top.” They also name “AFA leadership” rather than “the union” to create distance between members and leadership, implying the leadership is the obstacle and members should pressure them.
That’s not even wrong. Right now the total value of the package is largely known and they’re just working through the details of how to allocate it (and to whom). But, in United’s telling, the union hasn’t gotten to that part yet. They offer progress on “sit pay” which really would be industry-leading, though it naturally comes at the expense of other things flight attendants might want.
United can pay as much or slightly more than everyone else – but not materially more than that. The union already argued that the prior tentative agreement, voted down by 71% of flight attendants, was for as much money as it was possible to get. (Essentially, the union bet wrong on how to allocate that money, they misunderstood the priorities of their members.)
The ultimate message is: we’ll pay you more, but you have to give us productivity, flexibility, or other items to net it out.
We don’t yet know actual numbers and structure of current offers; retro pay and effective date; boarding pay and duty rights or minimum time guarantees, etc. So this isn’t detailed – but it clearly frames where the airline is – top of market pay, but not top of market plus everything else layered on top.
Talk is cheap. Why does management and the capital class typically hate and exploit labor? It’s not because those ‘pesky’ unions are refusing to allow members to get paid more… that’s absurd. Workers know better.
Maybe they should give the flight attendance the rest of the first class seats that aren’t being occupied by pilots yet?
“fank and file beliefs”
wow… that is new.
UA knows full well that frustration is boiling over w/ FAs. The union knows they have to deliver but ultimately fank and file FAs deliver service – which have the high potential of harming UA’s customers.
the bottom line is that UA’s costs are going to go up substantially just because of the increased salaries… UA is trying to offset that with better productivity but all of the talk about UA being even remotely close to DL in financial performance will quickly come to an end. UA is not financially or operationally in the same camp as DL and these raises will ensure that UA’s financial results will be squarely between bottom performing AA and top performing DL – in other words, mediocre at best.
Operationally, UA is much closer to AA – which isn’t as bad as many think they are – than near the top where DL and WN are.