United Airlines flight attendants haven’t had a raise in four years, as contract negotiations drag on. The union says that the airline is making unreasonable demands, like only paying health care benefits for flight attendants who work.
- Flight attendants at United can trip trade, and get their flying hours down to zero, while still keeping their benefits.
- This was a feature of United Airlines before the Continental merger. Continental flight attendants used to have to work a minimum of 40 hours a month for their benefits.
- The company raised eliminating this unique feature of the contract.
There are flight attendants who get their hours down to zero each month, month after month, and United remains on the hook for benefits expense. This also encourages flight attendants to stay on at United rather than retire, since they can keep benefits for free without still working. They have the highest seniority for picking up trips that they aren’t going to fly themselves.
Sometimes flight attendants even ‘sell their seniority’ by selling the trips they’re trying to get rid of to other crewmembers, bidding on the most desirable flight sand then letting junior crew who couldn’t secure those on their own fly them.
A reader asks, though, why does the union fight to keep this?
[T]he concept of flight attendants who trade their hours down to zero for years on end is so foreign to most of us.
…[H]ow is that possible when it isn’t for other groups (barring a month here or there when there is an illness) and two, why is the union fighting for this when the working crew members are likely not wanting to give up salary for these unusual benefits for others? Seems like something junior and senior working crew can agree on.
Senior crew taking the best trips away from senior crew is controversial, and hurts junior crew alike. So shouldn’t the union be willing to cede this? It’s an expense United is incurring that the union contract ultimately funds elsewhere, such as lower wages.
The reason that the union serves this special interest of a small group of flight attendants is actually easy to understand, since it’s the same reason that politics yields pork barrel spending: concentrated benefits and dispersed costs.
- The flight attendants who benefit from this benefit a lot. They have a huge incentive to care. They’ll make noise, they’ll campaign for or against union leaders.
- Flight attendants hurt by this are only harmed slightly. They don’t have nearly the same incentive to exert effort to fight it – or even to pay enough attention to understand the issue and how it comes out of their schedules and pocketbooks.
Special interests lobby Washington for perks and subsidies. Since they capture most of the value themselves, they’re willing to spend a lot of money and put in a lot of effort to advocate for those. And since most of the time the cost is spread out against taxpayers as a whole, each taxpayer pays very little. It wouldn’t even be rational spending time let alone money opposing these costs. You pay the dollar or two, rather than dedicating days and money to lobbying against it.
The same is true for niche union contract provisions. It’s underappreciated how much in these contracts is about one group of flight attendants taking from another, rather than from employees taking from the company. Which crew have to work reserve is one issue like this. Boarding pay is another.
Historically flight attendant unions preferred higher hourly rates for duty hours which excluding boarding time, because that benefited senior crew who worked longer flights and spent less time boarding at the expense of junior crew who work more shorter flights and spend a lot more time boarding. It wasn’t until non-union Delta added boarding pay that unions felt pressure to negotiate for this.
And it’s these redistribution issues between flight attendants that are part of what the union complains is holding back a new contract.
Note to Delta flight attendants: A union will sell you out for a small group of vocal senior employees costing your employer millions.
Divide and conquer! Classic. Welcome bootlickers, scabs, and shills. Blame the young, the poor, immigrants, laptops, emails, whatever you want, and please improve nothing. ‘Hard work’ is thing only thing that frees us, right? Enjoy your gated communities.
Same for vacation accrual?
Flight attendants who drop their trips down to zero STILL have to pay for their monthly insurance premiums. It’s not free, Gary. But you already knew that, didn’t you? It’s not the first time you’ve written a hatchet piece disparaging flight attendants with seniority.
Did you ask United why they’ve done very little to eliminate third party computer bots that enable junior flight attendants to have an unfair advantage trading their trips. Even when those bots create an insecure back door to UA’s computer system? Even when those bots crash the system? Does that fit your agenda, Gary?
I have a friend of mine who has been on the United payroll for years and she never flies.
She attends mandatory trainings and gives away all her flights. We always joke that I fly United more than she does.
@1990 – I do like my luxury neighborhood and we have armed guards (we hire off duty police in uniform and patrol cars as our security) to keep people like you out.
BTW you are wrong. The economy would be better without unions (who have outlived their need) and if business could act in the most effective manner. Employees are simply a cost of doing business and to assign anything else to the decision making process is sub optimal (as a fee 100,000 Fed employees are about to find out once Elon publishes his recommendations)
If I go on leave at my job, my medical benefits don’t just stop.
The important thing though, is that Medicare For All would help fix this since then companies wouldn’t need to worry about providing medical coverage.
@John
Those employees pay a small portion of the monthly health care bill. United pays 90% or more of the bill. Any of us would be happy to get a great health care plan for that price while not working.
@Retired Gambler
Oh baby. The fish are biting today! Keep punching down. No consequences, right? Enjoy your false sense of security. Remember to pay your guards well. After all, you are totally the only type of person that owns weapons. Libcucks are all poor, too. I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Gary is mostly right.
The reason that UA is raising this issue is because it does cost United to keep employees on the payroll that add nothing.
Just for comparison, DL has about 6,000 fewer employees to operate more flights but fewer ASMs. UA’s labor productivity is likely lower than DL’s. And DL’s employee count includes Endeavor which is a wholly owned subsidiary.
American has about 125k employees and has even more employees than UA and operates fewer mainline flights than DL.
Unions simply create inefficiencies and part of the reason why DL can pay its employees more including higher profit sharing is because they work more efficiently.
inefficiency does cost the company and it costs all employees in profit sharing.
and, as noted, DL flight attendants are not about ready to jump for a union after the disaster that union representation has been for US airlines has been post -covid.
Very interesting to read this and in my opinion, unfair all around!
Ironic that the most senior FA’s are actually exploiting the junior and low seniority FA’s more than the company is.
If a senior flight attendant “trades” (or sells) long international trip to a junior flight attendant with a much lower wage scale doesn’t the company save money paying the much lower wages?