Tag Archives for union.
Delta Air Lines earned $5.2 billion in 2023 and will pay out $1.4 billion in profit sharing with employees getting about an extra month’s pay.
Delta flight attendants have it better than their peers. They have something real at risk. This isn’t crew at the bottom where a union organizer can point to a better life somewhere else and say ‘we can get you that’. Unionized crew at American and (AFA-represented) United look at what Delta flight attendants have with envy.
Following the recent Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 incident, the NTSB determined that the cockpit voice recorder, in place to help review aviation incidents and make flying safer, had already been recorded over. Two hours of recording time isn’t enough when it takes awhile to recover a ‘black box’. But pilot unions say their members’ privacy trumps safety.
The lowest wages are earned by the newest flight attendants. This structure is something unions have bargained for over decades and multiple contracts. Low wages to start, and higher wages as seniority grows, is something that benefits more senior crewmembers. The airline ultimately doesn’t care nearly as much about how the cost of flight attendants is distributed across flight attendants.
Though the union itself is responsible for low starting wages, AFA-CWA union head Sara Nelson says that it’s actually… sexism.
Back in March Delta Air Lines pilots agreed to a new contract. It set the highest pay rates that pilots in the industry had ever received. And it basically set the terms for pilot deals that would be struck throughout the rest of the year.
On Monday I wrote about the struggles of American Airlines flight attendants, especially junior crew, who have seen their wages eroded by inflation and whose last pay increase was in January 2019.
Some report lacking gas money to get to the airport, being unable to afford meals (and living off of snacks from the first class snack basket) and not being able to afford Christmas presents. But there’s a lot of confusion over how flight attendants are paid and how much they work.
Flight attendants at American Airlines, frustrated by lack of progress on a new contract, have gone online to commiserate and share how much they’re struggling day to day with a raise. Some don’t have money for gas to get to the airport, or to pay their bills and buy food so they make up for it pocketing snacks from the first class snack basket. Some of the stories are heart wrenching.
It turns out that the union no longer has confidence in the integrity of the ballot. They’ve discovered vulnerabilities that would have allowed the vote to be manipulated, and errors that may have failed to tally some votes. And they’re going to hold the vote over.
United’s flight attendants union – the same union that downplayed boarding pay at Spirit – wants to one-up Delta, American, and SkyWest.
They want boarding pay like Delta, and like what’s been offered at American (50% pay), but they also want “Ground Time Pay” (50% pay).
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants is railing against the National Mediation Board and its decision. But the board is dominated by Biden administration picks (2-1), and includes a former lawyer for a flight attendants union. This is not a group biased against labor, or against cabin crew.
They weren’t going to hand the Biden administration a holiday hot potato heading into holiday travel and re-election, though.
The AFA-CWA union, which represents United flight attendants, is reminding its members that under the Railway Labor Act it is illegal to engage in ‘self help’ (not just striking, but unilateral efforts to hurt the company) before being released from negotiations by the National Mediation Board.
AFA-CWA tells cabin crew that they cannot coordinate refusing to pick up trips, call for their colleagues to “work to rule” or to refuse to perform any duties, as well as “refusing to charge customers for buy-on-board products.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
