On Thursday American Airlines flight attendants will picket across the country, and at the White House. They’ve been without a raise since 2019, when their contract became amendable. They’ve asked for government permission to strike, but that hasn’t been forthcoming. There’s no deadlock. American Airlines has increased its offer since the last bargaining session.
A strong showing may signal ‘resolve’ to the company – that flight attendants are united in getting a good deal and won’t settle. But they probably do little else. Picketing in front of the White House might get more media, and make a point to the President not to intervene the way President Clinton did, halting an American Airlines flight attendants strike in 1993. I’m quite optimistic that a strike can be avoided altogether.
American Airlines has raised their financial offer. The union has changed the rhetoric around what they want. It’s no longer a target raise that far outpaces the rest of the industry. Instead they’re focused on,
- Wages comparable to what Southwest got in its latest contract
- Retro pay, for the increases they would have gotten had it not taken 5 years to get a new deal
Normally you wouldn’t expect much retro pay – perhaps a small signing bonus – in a flight attendant deal. However, Southwest Airlines didn’t just increase wages they provided retro pay as well and crew there can get $20,000.
Even in their picketing messaging, American flight attendants are now focused on the Southwest Airlines economic proposal which means they’re now within the zone of reality in terms of their bargaining. For a year I wrote that they couldn’t get there until union leadership elections have passed, and officers have no been re-elected.
Meanwhile, the airline has upped its own. It’s been pegged to non-union Delta. American offered to match the top of the industry in pay rates, and add boarding pay – something only Delta provided and no union contract has ever achieved. American also offered to match Delta’s profit-sharing formula, but those payments would still be lower for American crew because the airline earns less profit.
Delta raised pay 5%, and American increased its offer. Southwest has a big new contract, and these deals are complicated – some crew do better under one formula versus another. A Delta flight attendant working 80 hours, with boarding pay and profit sharing, earns as much as Southwest flight attendants will under this new contract.
What’s going to be tough, since the structures of the businesses and contracts are so different, is picking and choosing pieces of one and pieces of another. Delta has the comparable business, but a lot more flexibility that allows them to earn a higher return on the wages they pay.
While tempers are flaring, some of that may be for show, because the parties are finally talking about economic terms within the same framework – both sides are working from comparisons to what cabin crew make at other airlines.
Fire them all! Unions have no place in 2024. They only protect the incompetent and hold back the ambitious. Thank God I was never in a union or likely wouldn’t have risen from entry level programmer to Chief Information Officer of multiple national companies! Ambition and seeking career opportunities is what gets you ahead not settling for mediocre work and threatening to strike (which will never be allowed BTW). Get over it sky waitresses.
The idiot will think that they’re from Pan Am
It’s time for them to fully understand they’re all replaceable. They have a 2 week course with no prior knowledge. They are not any better than waiters in a restaurant. Actually, they’re worse.
Hey @Chris !!! 🙂
Yeah, go picket outside the WH. How original. That’ll show ‘em. Maybe Sara Nelson will come take off her hijab and switch into her trolly dolly outfit and run over from the Palestine encampment down the block and come chant for a bit.
For the first time in their professional lives, these FAs will be doing something.
OK Chief RG! Can you imagine having yourself as a boss? Scary indeed!!! Are you sure I wasn’t married to you? You sound VERY familiar.
Had we taken the first offer out of the gate, we would have signed ourselves right into a pay cut. As soon as we come to a TA and vote it in, Delta will raise their rates. Years and years ago my company cared about customer service and the flying experience. Today, as long as we shove everybody on, every seat filled and door is closed ON TIME, my boss tells me that is all that matters. If we go out with no bottled water, no juices, 10 meals short, my boss says oh well, just figure something out. I see this in so many industries. My Dr offices are race in to the room, nurse typing like a fiend on computer, sitting in room waiting on Dr, Dr racing in and still talking as he walks out door and everyone waving you out. Very sad. I just don’t get why everyone that doesn’t have my job care what I get paid. There are so many other airlines to book flights on. We get Delta and United’s “i am never flying those airlines again” and they get ours. We all still have full flights.
@Flyer1 totally agree. AA FAs should get paid a lot to do very little. The suits will still fill the planes. The rev per seat mile, might suck, but that’s the shareholders and debt holders problems right?
@Chris, Even worse, Trump Shuttle. For which Trump will respond that it is still operational since, of course, he is a genius airline executive.
Wait, what? The union is going to picket The White House when they’ve got the most pro-union President in office in the past 50 years? I guess the union leaders feel they need more enemies.
I can’t believe they are picketing in MSP. I’m surprised there are enough AA FAs there to picket. I don’t know why this isn’t resolved.
So AA is just ignoring Southwest’s contract and offering to match Delta because they know Delta will increase theirs later. They say they can’t compare themselves to Southwest. Why not? Because they just don’t feel like it. Typical 5 year old’s answer. They have no good reason.
Unions need to be outlawed.
MSP is an AA satellite base. Not sure how that came about but could it be a legacy of when AA had a lot more capacity on ORD-MSP than it does nowadays?
I am no great fan of employee unions, but those who want to ban such unions stand in opposition to the freedom of assembly that such unions represent and the ability of employees to team up together so as to not be as much of a doormat for the employers. I can’t stand with calls to ban employee unions.
@ GUWonder is correct about employees right to fredom of assembly. The problem isn’t the right of workers to form a union, it lies in the role of government denying employers the same rights. If you accept the concept of Freedom of Association for the workers, then to be consistent you must accept the same for the employer.
Unfortunately, the government denies the employers their freedom to associate and they are forced to recognize and bargain with a union of employees. If they retained their right of refusal and the ability to fire anyone who refused to perform their job duties at a previously agreed wage package, most of these work issues could be avoided.
Jeff. Training is 6 weeks, not 2. And it takes several weeks to hire someone. It’s not as easy as you think. Are you actually thinking that people just walk in and submit an application like Walmart and they all get hired from Dallas area??? Lol. Applicants come from all over the country.
The lack of info and knowledge from most of the commenters and Gary just proves how much people talk out their arses and are clueless. There has not been any new offer from AA. Isom is a hypocrite and full of .
If you want untrained waitresses to save your arse in a medical emergency, fire, or evacuation good luck with that. You won’t make it out alive, well actually maybe you will bc all you self centered know it alls would climb over children to save yourselves.
A lot of employers are part of the US Chamber of Commerce and other such “pro-business” membership unions that lobby the government and spread the narratives against expanding employee protections, employee power and an improvement in working conditions from wages to benefits to health and safety ones.
As the ones with control of the bigger pool of money, the employers are already on a playing field that is already stacked to benefit the employers way more than the employees.
@GUWonder started out good and then missed the mark. His most recent comment belies his hypocrisy. Natural rights should not be affected by whether or not you possess some perceived “advantage” in the marketplace. The fact remains, that in the case of unions, the laws are skewed towards and enhance the rights of the employees. To remain consistent, one must afford the same benefits to both parties. This is absent when looking at union laws in the U.S.
It’s too bad they didn’t plow through with negotiations during the depths of Covid when industry load factors were 35% and the only reason there weren’t massive layoffs that would have vastly exceeded 9/11 was because of government payroll support that allowed the airlines to stay on “warm standby.”
That would have been the time to go in with guns blazing and demand all sorts of things, or you would strike, ’cause, by golly, they would have promptly gotten a new contract.
Maybe not the one you wanted, but a new one for sure.
Corporations don’t have natural rights, as they aren’t natural persons. But the corporate-apologist federal judiciary — and the judges collectively are that more than anything else — keep ascribing rights to corporations as if corporations are persons. It would be a very interesting situation if natural persons could elect to identify solely as a corporation for various purposes currently beneficial to companies more than to natural persons.
Ah, the fallacy of the corporation argument. Corporations do not exist in nature, they are a legal entity formed by INDIVIDUALS, who shouldn’t lose their natural rights simply because they voluntarily decided to create an entity.
Also, if there is a “problem” with corporations, those problems are created by the government, back to my original point, and have no bearing on the issue being debated here. Simply put, if you support freedom of association for employees, you must support it for the officers/employees who run the corporation. Otherwise, your position smacks of hypocrisy. Rights don’t disappear when you join a group/corporation.