The United Airlines flight attendants union voted to fire its contract negotiating team, as reported by aviation watchdog JonNYC.
Negotiations have dragged on for years – the contract became amendable in 2021. The team had only just unveiled its monetary demands. And they ran out the clock on a favorable Democrat-majority National Mediation Board, so their bargaining position weakens. But the decision to slow walk was a national union decision, so this appears at least in part to be blame-shifting.
Hot off the press: UAL AFA message pic.twitter.com/i9Z01BjZyw
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) November 21, 2024
The national union’s strategy was to have American Airlines flight attendants do a contract first. That would set a bar that United cabin crew could negotiate up from. Even though American’s flight attendants are represented by their own independent union, the AFA-CWA let them their top negotiator Joe Burns. Then, if American flight attendants wound up going on strike, it was another union’s members feeling the pain to set that higher compensation bar. Joe Burns now moves over to do the United negotiations as part of these changes.
Contact negotiations have been adjourned until the New Year. The union says they’re mad at the Biden Administration’s National Mediation Board over this, but the union screwed up by slow-walking the negotiations. They didn’t factor the possibility of a President Trump. Now, they worry that when Republicans take over a majority on the Mediation Board, flight attendants won’t be permitted to strike (the board first has to declare an impasse, before releasing the parties into a ’30 day cooling off period’ that then permits ‘self-help’ until the President acts).
The union only just unveiled its compensation demands last month so claims the union has made about how the company is delaying are disingenuous.
Here’s what they asked for:
- 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. American flight attendants get future-year raises of 2.75%; 3%; 3%; and 3.5%. United flight attendants are asking for 4%.
- And they want these raises year after year. Traditionally there’s a fixed end date to the contract, and wages are frozen until there’s a new contract. That’s why American flight attendants had gotten their last raise in January 2019. Many American flight attendants now worry that their next deal will take four years to negotiate, during which they’ll be without raises.
And now that they’ve dismissed their own negotiations team, citing a need for change in strategy, they’re admitting in effect that blame lies with their team not the company for the slow rate of progress.
Ultimately we can expect that United’s deal will look similar to American’s but perhaps a little bit better, and profit sharing will be the biggest difference because even if they end up with the same formula United is more profitable. That was probably true regardless of the outcome of the election, but now the AFA no doubt worries that a strike is no longer in their toolkit.
But profit-sharing is the real difference-maker broadly. Delta Air Lines is the most profitable U.S. carrier, and their profit-sharing payments will make their cabin crew the highest paid. Delta flight attendants are non-union, so their pay is re-evaluated annually. They get raises each year. If United flight attendants see out-year increases like American’s, they are likely to be quickly surpassed by Delta wages.
Trolly Dolly Sara Nelson screws it up again. I love watching unions step on their own cranks out of arrogance. Good luck, UAL FA’s.
The DeltaDiffetence
Non-Union
The Delta Difference!
Winning.
Here’s an idea. Give the FA’s a bonus for every PDB served. If they serve a double then double that bonus.
The union should negotiate equal wages for equal work. In other words, pay hike for most, pay cut for FAs with a lot of seniority
Sara was too busy trying to convince DL FAs they needed a union and she couldn’t deliver for UA’s FAs which have been putting food on her table.
UA’s recent finances that narrow the gap w/ DL are based on tens of thousands of underpaid, unhappy employees so its profits aren’t at all comparable to DL while WN, even though in the midst of its own financial crisis raised the salaries of its own employees.
UA FAs and other employees whose contract becomes amendable in weeks will never recover what they have lost by putting their faith in a union to deliver.
In the FAs case, trusting the AFA to deliver will go down as a career earnings altering error for many UA FAs even as DL FAs continue to tack on higher salaries, boarding pay, and profit sharing.
Talk about a conflict of interest: why on earth would AA flight attendants allow the UA negotiator to lead their efforts??
Quick comments
Profit sharing is never a guarantee during economic downturns for example it should not be expected. Since it’s not GUARANTEED like hourly flight pay then that means American is paying more than Delta currently even though Delta is the most profitable. Furthermore, do not leave out that Southwest pays the absolute highest and is not the most profitable.I say this all to say is you seem to hate union airlines but Southwest flight attendants appear to be laughing all the way to the bank and have actual work rules unlike Delta flight attendants.
Another note since you love to create articles and leave out tons of information. Did you mention United management asking for concessions like getting rid out their PPO insurance, pbs, and no retro pay? Changes and concessions like this are unacceptable and that is one primary reason why there has not been much progress. You even failed to mention that the flight attendants are starting a petition and gathering signatures from everyone and forwarding it to management telling them no concessions. You are clearly anti union and also terrible at reporting all the facts
Compensation is one of, if not the last, item discussed in negotiations. The fact you keep harping on the fact that UA flight attendants just brought their compensation demands forward is obnoxious.
@Daniel – my point is that it’s been 3 years and the Biden NMB had to demand they release their compensation asks, so saying United is the one slow-walking is disingenuous.
What evidence do you have that AFA was intentionally slow walked the negotiations? AA’s negotiations have taken 5 years and just resolved. The corporations are the ones slow walking this. With AA the company would come back every month (that’s all the National Mediation Board would schedule, they determine to meet once a month for 3 days, this is not an ongoing back and forth all month for 5 years) with JUST enough for the NMB to deem we were making progress and reschedule for one month later. Only in the very final days, when the mediation could no longer pretend to deem that progress was being made, did they schedule intensive mediations every other week then weekly. These corporations know just how to walk the government mandated process for negotiations to drag out the process to hopefully wear down the workgroup to accepting significantly less than they ask (and deserve) with inflation rising and employees needing something to get by financially. There’s two things you’re doing- not doing your research on the whole article and quickly pumping out clickbait OR (what you obviously do) using about 20%-50% facts and spinning it into salacious click bait for revenue.
The NMB sets the schedule once it’s in federal mediation, not the company.
At AA, negotiations couldn’t get real until union officers were re-elected. I wrote for a year that’s what would happen, and it’s exactly what happened.
At UA, they were waiting for American to get their contract done first – so that a different union could take risks and possibly have to endure a strike, and so that deal would set a new bar for their own bargaining.
just saying,
surely you realize that WN counts flights for crew purposes differently than other carriers, in part because there are different requirements.
WN FAs have to clean the cabins on many WN flights; other airlines including DL FAs don’t do that.
You would like to believe that DL FAs don’t have work rules and yet there are a host of things that DL FAs don’t do that other airline FAs do.
And, as much as you would like to think that profit sharing isn’t guaranteed, there is, in reality, no guarantee that a company will resolve their labor contracts anywhere close to when they are supposed to be resolved.
DL, without a union, raised the pay of its unionized pilots and its non-union FAs and ground staff at industry leading rates far before any of the unionized airlines got around to it.
And Gary did not get into the specifics of the contract but if UA is wanting to cut insurance coverage and those topics are just now being discussed, then it is completely the fault of UA AFA negotiators.
As I have said for months – if not years – Scott Kirby told its employees that he would resolve their labor contracts at industry leading rates and make up the difference for UA unions waiting to make sure another airline didn’t jump over what UA settled for.
It is UA FAs that are at the bottom of the big 4; arguing about whether DL or WN FAs are paid higher does absolutely nothing to console UA FAs.
UA FAs led by Sara Nelson and the AFA were played like yesterday’s violin. and the line FAs aren’t going to be subjected to the AFA’s stupidity in negotiations.
@Tim Dunn AKA delusional purple people eater
Surely you realize regardless they are compensated higher due to having free insurance, higher duty rigs, and actual work rules. You are anti-union and a Delta worshipper but know this Timmy Tim work rules are money. If Delta flight attendants are so happy explain to me why many of them are advocating for a union, a contract, a clear sick policy, not to be re routed endlessly because SMELTA allows it and changes rules around whenever they feel like it.
Honey pay attention because reading is so fundamental and you’re clearly not doing it. United wanting to cut PPO coverage is not new it’s been covered heavily in updates that the Union puts out every month. All of this is viewable to the public online. It’s called what? RESEARCH
Southwest is the highest paid and they have a union then it goes American. Delta is in third place yet is the most profitable with what Timmy? NO UNION
just saying,
I don’t care what updates the AFA puts out but it is clear that the AFA bought, hook, line and sinker, Scott Kirby’s pinky promise that UA would make sure FAs were paid the highest when everyone else settled.
The AFA was suckered. THAT is why the rank and file want AFA’s negotiators booted.
And as much as you want to believe otherwise, DL FAs ARE still the highest compensated in part because they did not have to wait years to get a settlement – which is exactly what AA and WN got.
You want to convince us that what exists in a contract right now is superior to the pay that DL FAs put in the bank years ago – and you are deluded.
WN FAs do far more work than any of the legacy FAs. There are no crew rest cabins on WN’s 737s as exist on AA, DL and UA widebodies. WN FAs take off and land far more often, clean the cabins and every other aspect of their work.
They are not paid anywhere proportionately to what they did.
And WN employees endlessly touted their own profit sharing – until they didn’t have it.
Simply put, DL has consistently paid more profit sharing than the entire rest of the industry COMBINED.
You can try desperately to exclude that compensation but it is real and there isn’t an FA anywhere in the US that would not die to have DL FAs’ profit sharing – which you want to exclude from compensation because you don’t have it.
go crawl back in your hole and know that real people w/ real brains- including both Gary and me – can see the labor situation for what it is – which is neither pro-union or anti-union but pro reality.
@Tim Done
So you mean to tell me the multiple media outlets reporting that Southwest flight attendants are the highest paid are false and a “blogger” and a people purple eater are correct? GTOH you really will stop at nothing to support Delta even when it’s providing false information.
Let’s do our proper research on the highest paid flight attendants when it comes to hourly pay and duty rigs shall we?
1. Southwest
2. American
3. SMELTA
4. United
I live in place called reality where 9/11 and Covid happened and I know profit sharing is not a guarantee nor should it be expected during economic downturns
You also sound like a MAGA supporter so I can’t lower myself to chat with you any further. Toodles!
you can’t understand that what people actually make matters far more than a contract.
DL FAs get profit sharing in line with DL’s role as the most profitable US airline.
Yes, DL FAs in real life beat WN and AA FAs – and DL FAs didn’t have to wait years for a union to convince a federal mediator to get serious with the company.
The interest on the money that DL FAs could have made by settling early is worth hundreds of dollars per year – on top of the union dues that all of those other airline FAs made – which you certainly don’t want to include as a real cost of being unionized.
Facts are so inconvenient, aren’t they?
I’m sure United has a number in mind, and the flight attendants can bucket that out to their members any way they want to. Want to keep the PPO? Then reduce the wage demands. Want more for the senior flight attendants? Then reduce what goes to the junior flight attendants and sell it to them, but don’t make it so low that no one wants to start at United. Want more back wages? Then remove some future money, or put more future money at risk via profit sharing. I’m sure the union know this, but they have to be able to sell it to the union members.
Still, the question of whether the flight attendants deserve much of the credit card revenue. They influence the desirability of that card by some degree, but certainly not all of it. Delta might have similar conversations. If they come out with a new, more lucrative credit card, how much of that was because people were getting PDB drinks? Overall, flight attendants at a big pay of an airlines net promotor score.
Where is Joe Burns? Thought he was the best AFA had