Tag Archives for union.
Delta Air Lines won’t be furloughing any flight attendants this year, even as its largest competitors lay off thousands.
Last Labor Day Delta gave its non-union workforce a big raise. This Labor Day their flight attendants get to keep their jobs. Delta has made a strong argument to its flight attendants not to unionize.
The American Airlines flight attendants union, Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), is exceptionally weak. They’ve been dysfunctional for years. I’ve written in the past about efforts by the larger Association of Flight Attendants, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America and AFL-CIO, to get their nose in under the tent.
Reading through the mid-August minutes of the APFA’s Executive Committee meeting I was initially struck by just three things.
Furloughs shrink the union budget, but non-paying union members can’t vote. Taking the newest hires out of the equation protects old guard union leadership. The union was already weakened, having squandered its cash, and has been downright docile during the Covid crisis. But the company has lost all of its leverage by furloughing flight attendants, rather than holding out the potential to minimize furloughs in exchange for a concessionary contract.
American wanted to shed its flight attendant workforce by 12,600 (or 47% of flight attendants). They couldn’t have done that right away because they only sent out 9950 WARN Act notices. Leaves and voluntary quits did not – as promised – trade off with threatened layoffs, but were used to increase the number of flight attendants who won’t be working for the airline October 1.
Sixteen Senate Republicans have signed onto a proposal for a second airline payroll bailout. The measure, which would give U.S. carriers a second $25 billion injection, likely has enough votes to pass – but that doesn’t mean it’ll be in the next coronavirus relief package.
The stock market response to the news shows this is really a subsidy for airline owners. Meanwhile the funding is unnecessary, too late, and too much money to address the stated desire to protect workers.
Unions take political positions their members disagree with all the time. And members should feel free to communicate with their union leadership over those disagreements. It’s fair to proscribe the time, place and manner for those disagreements – but shocking for a union President to secure for the firing of a union member over an internal union matter.
Germany’s Die Welt is reporting that the head of Lufthansa’s cabin crew union demanded “one million euros from Lufthansa” to agree to “job losses and reduced pay” for members as part of the airline’s restructuring and bailout.
The union, for its part, denies these claims as it fights to minimize the thousands of jobs that are expected to be lost at Lufthansa.
When current American Airlines management ran US Airways they were notorious for bad labor relations. They never managed to get a single pilot contract for America West and US Airways pilots, so never completed the merger. Instead they sat back and benefited from lower wages as the two pilots groups fought against each other.
Now American’s flight attendants may wind up fighting against each other, as two classes of employees within the union are treated very differently. This, as the flight attendants are ostensibly in new contract negotiations with the airline and as there’s a move afoot to dump the current Association of Professional Flight Attendants with the Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers Of America.
Sara Nelson is President of the AFA-CWA, flight attendants union with 50,000 members and part of the national Communications Workers of America. She’s an activist in the left wing of the Democratic Party, a Bernie Sanders supporter, and has been called ‘the most powerful flight attendant in America’ as a rising star in the labor movement.
Since no joint contract had been achieved, each work group kept their own separate work and the airline’s 2013 merger still isn’t complete. 2019 was a long, hot summer with the airline’s operations melting down amidst a work slowdown by mechanics.
So what did American agree to? The details are still being worked through, and comparisons to existing deals will need to be made, but roughly it appears…
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 »
