Tag Archives for union.
The President of the American Airlines pilot union has been removed, recalled by the union’s board of directors in a 15-5 vote. Captain Ed Sicher, in office in 2022, had controversially sought to exclude pilots from union positions that favored merging with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), which is the largest pilot union group while pilots at American have their own independent union.
They are asking for 3% – 4% more than what American Airlines flight attendants just won. The bigger percentage increases are for more senior crew, who already earn more. And they are asking for bigger future raises, too.
Passengers flying with Air Canada can breathe a sigh of relief after the airline reached a last-minute agreement with its pilots, narrowly averting a significant disruption that would have impacted more than 110,000 travelers per day.
The agreement provides 18% – 20% raises right away, full retro pay, plus boarding pay which the union says averages to an 8.5% raise. Taken together this outpaces what inflation has eroded from flight attendant wages over the last 5 years.
Pilots have been seeing record wages in new deals at the major carriers, in the face of paying too many to retire at the depths of Covid while not adding more to the pipeline, a recovery in air travel, and the time and cost to introduce new pilots as a result of government regulation lobbied for by the big pilot union ALPA. The tide may be about to turn.
Alaska Airlines flight attendants have just voted down the contract their union negotiated. It would have given them an immediate 18% raise and then 3% raises in subsequent years. They’d receive boarding pass and retro pay back to 2022. The vote wasn’t close – 68 to 32 against.
There are a number of issues that flight attendants are unhappy with in the new contract their union negotiated with American. The last time cabin crew voted on a contract, they voted it down. The union is doing a good job selling it, in my opinion, but the membership is clearly divided – and their powerful LAX base president has given new voice to the opposition.
This is a change – amounting to “B-scale” work rules – that was demanded by the union. And it’s going to make the flight attendant career at American Airlines much less appealing to anyone considering it in the future.
The new American Airlines flight attendants contract that workers will be asked to vote on contains new language about the union helping the airline track down and discipline members who sell their seniority.
Flight attendants union head Sara Nelson has some interesting things to say about bargaining at United and efforts to unionize Delta – though what’s going on at American could play into her hands nicely.
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 »
