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Delta Air Lines Flight Attendant Fired For Calling Out A Troll On Social Media

by Gary Leff

Nov 27 2020

Kiersten Bak, who was just hired as a flight attendant by Delta in March, was fired last month for posts she made on her Facebook account. She “called out a man who had been trolling her” and her comments were reported to her employer, which was identified based on a profile picture she used in her uniform.

She was questioned about a photo with her top sweater buttons unbottoned and, she says, asked whether she’s racist against white men, before being terminated for violating the airline’s social media policy.

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The Post-David Dao Era – and the $10,000 Bump Voucher – Is Ending

by Gary Leff

airline ticket
Jan 05 2020

Airlines are tightening their belts, trying to cut what it costs them to give out denied boarding compensation to passengers when they overbook a flight. Both United and American have copied Delta in soliciting ‘bids’ from customers for what compensation they’d accept, hoping to avoid bidding wars at the gate.

In the wake of United’s April 2017 passenger dragging incident – where David Dao was told to give up his seat for two crewmembers and refused, winding up bloodied by airport – there was a huge public backlash against bumping passengers off of overbooked flights. And airlines started paying out far more compensation to avoid involuntarily denying boarding to passengers.

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New Push to Unionize Delta Flight Attendants

by Gary Leff

delta plane
Nov 05 2019

CEOs of American and United are pumping their fists in the air with news that the Association of Flight-Attendants-CWA has launched an effort to unionize Delta flight attendants. Finally, they’re thinking, their more profitable competitor may be saddled with the same onerous work rules that United and American face – and perhaps the better service flight attendants provide will go away in the long run, too.

Delta flight attendants can choose a union, with the costs and job protections that provides. However they can expect profit sharing to fall, the raises they’re getting without negotiation to go away. They won’t keep these things because the higher cost of unionization will trade off with wages (the value of the wage can’t exceed the value of marginal product) and because Delta will have to signal to mechanics that unionization doesn’t deliver benefits.

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Customers are Won and Lost One at a Time

by Gary Leff

delta plane
Sep 16 2019

You’d think that an airline like Delta has so many customers, how can a single interaction with one of them matter for the bottom line?

But you have to remember that Delta has over 80,000 employees. Not every one of them interfaces with customers, although most things that nearly every one of them does has an effect on customers. And employees are in contact throughout their days, each and every hour they’re at work, in some cases as many as 250 days a year.

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