American Airlines recently offered to raise flight attendants’ salaries by 17 percent – but workers say this will not be enough to end the first airline strike in 15 years.
As the airline and its flight crews negotiate, American CEO Robert Isom sent out a video message this week offering a 17% pay raise, just enough to push new flight attendants in Boston and Miami above food stamp eligibility.
The airline said the raise would take effect immediately and claimed it was “asking nothing in return from the union,” an unusual move, Isom said in the video message, which was confirmed by an American Airlines spokesperson. “But these are unusual times.”
However, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) rejected the offer, calling it a “PR stunt” ahead of strike negotiations scheduled to take place next week between American Airlines and the union.
Inflation rises, wages remain unchanged
APFA and American Airlines have been negotiating a new contract since the previous one expired in 2019, said APFA President Julie Hedrick Assets.
“We’re behind on everything,” Hedrick said. She cited low wages and low allowances for travel meal costs as the most pressing problems. On domestic flights, flight attendants are paid an additional $2.20 per hour for meal costs; on international flights, it’s $2.50. Those figures are “far behind” the actual meal costs, Hendrick said.
Since 2014, when the previous contract was negotiated, flight attendants have received meager starting salaries despite inflation rising 33%, Hedrick said. According to an employment verification letter from American which was circulating on Reddit A few weeks ago, an entry-level flight attendant could expect an annual salary of $27,315 before taxes. (Like many airlines, American pays its flight attendants only for the time the plane is in the airBoarding passengers, waiting between flights, and traveling to and from the airport mean that flight attendants typically work about two hours per paid “flight hour.”)
American’s proposed 17 percent increase would raise starting pay to $31,959 a year, or $35.50 per flying hour, putting young flight attendants who live alone above the food stamp eligibility level in states like Massachusetts or Florida.
Most newly hired flight attendants must live in cities like Dallas, Miami and New York, where the cost of living is so high they cannot afford it, Hedrick noted.
American flight attendants sleep in their cars, she said, and some of them fight for flights just for the chance to eat the food on the plane if the pilots don’t eat theirs first.
“Our newly hired flight attendants are having a tough time,” Hendrick said, adding that new hires were the most opposed to the 17 percent pay increase.
For these flight attendants, the declining pay is another example of how dire it is when you look at the years following the pandemic, which have exacerbated the industry’s long-standing problems, including staff shortages, long hours and unruly passengers, some of whom Attack on airline staff.
This leads to record-breaking burnout among participants.
18 months of picketing
“We have been on strike for a year and a half and have walked out at least 11 times,” Hedrick said. “Our flight attendants have shown our determination and solidarity to get a collective agreement, an industry-wide agreement that we deserve, and we will settle for nothing less.”
APFA proposes a 33 percent pay increase – in line with inflation since 2014 – with a cap of $91 an hour in the first year of a new contract and pay increases for each subsequent year.
A spokesman for American Airlines said Assets that the video message represented “the latest from American.” They did not answer questions about the proposal or the upcoming negotiations.
Of the 39 individual issues on the table – such as sick leave or crew rest periods – APFA and American have reached a “tentative agreement” on 25. The other 14 concern compensation, expenses, vacation and other contract terms.
100-year-old law could prevent strike
Union leaders face an uphill battle when they travel to Washington to negotiate next week. Airline strikes are extremely rare – the last one was in 2010. when Spirit Airlines pilots went on strike for five days.
That’s because railroad and airline workers aren’t allowed to strike unless they get the green light from federal mediation groups, via the 1926 law. Railway Workers’ Labor Act. One such group, the National Mediation Board, will oversee negotiations with American Airlines and can allow a strike if it finds the groups are at an impasse. However, the federal government can also block a strike – as happened in December 2022 when President Joe Biden signed a measure passed by Congress to enforce a collective agreement between the railway companies and the employees, which many employees had rejected.
Biden, who called himself “the most union-friendly president” in history, had pushed through the agreement to avoid an “economic catastrophe” during the holidays, he said at the time. With several major railroad companies threatened by an industry-wide strike, the risks to an agreement extremely high; Each day of the strike could have resulted in $2 billion in losses.
If American Airlines were to be attacked, the risk would be lower because other major airlines would not be affected.
But American nurses are not the only ones demanding pay increases. United Airlines Is still under negotiation a new contract with their flight attendants. Southwest AirlinesIn April, approved a contract This includes pay increases totaling more than 33% over four years. The union representing Southwest flight attendants, the Transport Workers Union, said this resulted in record raises for flight attendants and set an industry standard.
APFA is also asking for a 33% increase, with increases of 5%, 4% and another 4% for the remaining years of a four-year agreement.
The union has also said it will not accept any contract without retroactive pay. Last year, American Airlines paid its pilots $230 million in retroactive payments after negotiations with the pilots’ union.
Hendricks’ message regarding the 17% increase seems to be: We want the whole package, not piecemeal increases.
“Our flight attendants want nothing to do with this,” she said. “They said overwhelmingly yesterday, ‘No, we want a contract. We’ve negotiated long enough and it’s time to get this deal done.'”