American Airlines flight attendants negotiated to get boarding pay, like Delta pioneered for its flight attendants and to get Delta’s profit sharing formula. The goal of flight attendants in negotiations at American Airlines was to get paid like Delta’s.
Yet after years of negotiations, tremendous drama, and multiple attempts to get permission from a Biden administration-dominated National Mediation Board to strike Delta flight attendants still earn more. There is much confusion over this.
Yesterday Delta announced a 4% pay increase for flight attendants effective June 1:
Delta’s new pay scale! Thoughts?
byu/No_Telephone4961 inflightattendants
The airline provides pay increases every year. When flight attendant union contracts expire (‘become amendable’), cabin crew at unionized airlines go years without an increase. There’s a claim, though, that come October 1, American Airlines flight attendants will be earning more than those at Delta. This is not true. They will have a slightly higher hourly rate:
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byu/No_Telephone4961 from discussion
inflightattendants
There are two important points that are missed here. Delta’s hourly rates are still higher, net of union dues and this doesn’t consider profit sharing. The two carriers may now have the same formula, but Delta makes money and American doesn’t really. Delta profit sharing equated to an additional five weeks of pay this year, or around 10%.
AFA-CWA union activists who are trying to organize at Delta are gaslighting crew into thinking that cabin crew elsewhere are getting a better deal, which isn’t true. Cabin crew at AFA-CWA-represented United have even gone five years without a raise.
Highest rate are amazing.
Damn Gary, its almost as if you think the only value of a Union is their effect on salaries… You should read a flight attendant contract and you’ll see how there is way more than just pay that affects a flight attendant (scheduling, work rules, off time, vacation etc.) – “better deal” doesn’t just mean pay.
It’s easy to say that flight attendants are overpaid, and maybe they are. But if you fly Frontier, you’ll quickly notice that their flight attendants are less professional and seem less qualified than those on the major US airlines. Frontier flight attendants make significantly less money. In this day and age, maybe you need to “overpay” your flight attendants if you want higher quality. Given how safe airline travel is — and how little in-flight service US airlines provide domestic passengers — maybe you don’t need super qualified flight attendants, but if you want them, you may have to pay for them.
This all boils down to DL’s ability to generate the revenues necessary to pay its people well – which translate into higher levels of service. DL’s post-covid employee compensation strategy certainly include squeezing competitors.
AA and WN’s margins would be much higher if they didn’t have to match DL’s pay rates. UA’s will fall when they get around to paying their mechanics and FAs even industry-comparable salaries – both of which have amendable contracts – and the 4 other workgroups that will have amendable contracts by summer.
Andy,
and yet, you and others can’t come up w/ real data on how unionized FAs do better than DL’s FAs (or SkyWest’s).
and it is mighty hard for unionized FAs to see DL pay rates like what was published above and then justify it by nebulous claims about what DL FAs don’t have.
I’m happy for Delta’s employees. Yet, I still think their flight attendants and baggage handlers should join Delta’s pilots (since 1934) and finally organize. You can both get paid more and have better protections, too. It’s not mutually exclusive. This is not hard.
Yet again, both historically and today, unions have been good for workers and our society at-large. @Andy is right; it’s more than just money. Unions advocate for more stable and productive workforces, reducing turnover and providing platforms for workers to address concerns and improve their jobs and lives. Unions reduce income inequality and promote growth by raising wages and increasing economic activity. Modern America was built by unions and their members.
Why some of you loathe unions feels like a false pretense to me. Many of the right-wingers seem to think that these are liberal entities that seek to diminish their culture or power. Unless you are a centimillionaire or wealthier, who exploits workers and public resources, you, too, should be supportive of unions and their members, and encourage more union participation and expansion. Let’s do better. We deserve it.
@Chopsticks — Company culture or management and leadership (or lack thereof) is more what you are referring to than anything to do with the compensation structure of crew members. But, ok, so you don’t enjoy Frontier. Then, stop flying them, and try a competitor.
1990
please provide data on what protections DL’s FAs don’t have that other airline FAs actually get.
We constantly hear about airlines specifically violating union contracts , leading to grievances which get tossed into a pot or resolved by a company favorable mediator.
DL pilots talk about it all the time.
The notion that unionized FAs have better job protections than DL FAs (and SkyWest relative to other regional FAs) is simply a union talking point that is not backed up by real data.
@1990 I can see your point, but there really instances where unionizing turned an amicable situation between labor and management into an adversarial one. Once you enshrine work rules and the like to a contract you will have people on both sides that expect everyone to perform “to contract,” regardless of the context or the implications. I see this in healthcare all the time.
Healthcare providers refuse to exceed their contracted staffing ratios, arguing “it’s not safe.” The result is a patient that gets NO care. While the healthcare provider may have made it “safer” for themself, they have done so at the expense of someone in need of care…and that person has become less safe. It’s the whole “out of sight, out of mind,” thing.
I don’t have the answer here, but I’m cautious of suggestions that when things are working well a change is in order.
@1990 I think the legitimate critique of unions is that they often diverge in practice from what they are designed to be in theory. The leadership of some unions (like the Teamsters and the UAW) does a genuinely good job at representing its members’ interests, but many unions have awful, do-nothing or even corrupt leadership that is hard to replace due to the way unions are structured (or leadership is structurally inhibited from being effective due to Congressional bans on striking).
Union leadership also has to continually visually convince the membership that it is “earning the union dues”. Amicable relations and speedy and quiet negotiations with good-faith management are unlikely to be visible to average union members, so the leadership has a strong incentive to create unnecessary public drama through outrageous requests/strikes to generate media coverage and attention. This may be great for valorizing union leadership and furthering their poliical careers, but it is corrosive to company culture in the long run.
A third valid critique is that unions overemphasize seniority and protect mediocre workers while underrepresenting young workers. This is because union contracts only require a bare 50% majority of the current union membership to vote in favor of a deal. Company management knows this, so union deals almost always “buy the vote” of current workers with seniority and average workers in exchange for creating bad terms for future hires and capping compensation for top performers.
I think it speaks volumes about Delta and Ed Bastian that they came out with that pay scale and didn’t even bother to match American for the most topped out flight attendants. Your excuse for everything is Profit sharing and it’s so pathetic!
Profit sharing is no guarantee and I’m going to guess it will be lower since they didn’t do 5% increases this year. For the most profitable airline in The US I expect better! Alaska even got higher profit sharing than Delta and they have way better work rules than the purple cult! Work rules are money look it up!!!!
@ Tim — Past tense. DL is dead.
@Ryan what you expect from a business is immaterial. It’s not your company.
I’m not sure while people are shocked when publicly-traded companies emphasize profit. Folks, we live in a capitalistic society. In capitalist markets the objective of companies is to maximum return on investment or value to shareholders /owners. Capitalism is not a race to the top on things like compensation and consumer experience. It is about what the market will tolerate and then striking the right balance in the moment.
I agree that everyone should be paid what they’re worth for their job, commensurate with the expectations of the role. That said, just because people THINK they should have a raise does not mean they are ENTITLED to a raise. Nearly every day I hear newbies complain that they are entitled to make what someone with dozens of years their senior makes because “we do the same job.” I’m here to tell you they are often not doing the same job. Once does it expertly, efficiently and without drama while others talk about how overworked they are, how hard job is and how it’s not fair.
In the end, AA negotiated a contract with their FAs. DL pays a rate that people are willing to accept. DL will do what it needs to do to discourage more organizing by their employees. Can’t say I blame them. I’d do the same thing (he says with the belief that unions add value, but the understanding that this is just how business works in the US).
Gene,
DL is not only still very much alive but still writing big checks off of earnings.