American Airlines recently offered its flight attendants a 17 percent pay raise, but staff say it won’t be enough to finish the airline’s first 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, simply enough to push recent 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 within 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 happen next week between American Airlines and the union.
Inflation rises, wages remain unchanged
APFA and American Airlines have been negotiating a brand new contract because 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 essentially the most pressing problems. On domestic flights, flight attendants are paid a further $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 measly starting salaries despite inflation rising 33%, Hedrick said. According to an employment verification letter from American that circulated on Reddit a couple of weeks ago, an entry-level flight attendant can expect to make an annual salary of $27,315 before taxes. (Like many airlines, American pays its flight attendants just for the time the plane is within 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 12 months, 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 price of living is so high they can’t afford it, Hedrick noted.
American flight attendants sleep of their cars, she said, and a few of them fight for flights only for the possibility 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 recent hires were essentially the most against the 17 percent pay increase.
For these flight attendants, the declining pay is one other example of how dire it’s if you take a look at the years following the pandemic, which have exacerbated the industry’s long-standing problems, including staff shortages, long hours and unruly passengers, a few of whom Attack on airline staff.
This results in record-breaking burnout amongst 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 step with inflation since 2014 – with a cap of $91 an hour in the primary 12 months of a brand new contract and pay increases for every subsequent 12 months.
A spokesman for American Airlines said Assets that the video message represented “the latest from American.” They didn’t answer questions on the proposal or the upcoming negotiations.
Of the 39 individual issues on the table – resembling 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 once they travel to Washington to barter 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 staff 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 might allow a strike if it finds the groups are at an impasse. However, the federal government may prevent a strike – as happened in December 2022, when President Joe Biden signed a measure passed by Congress to implement a collective bargaining agreement between railroads and staff that many staff had opposed.
Biden, who calls himself the “most union-friendly president” in history, pushed through the deal to avoid an “economic catastrophe” in the course of the holidays, he said on the time. With several major railroads threatened by an industry-wide strike, the stakes of a deal were extremely high; every day of the strike could have cost $2 billion.
If American Airlines were to be attacked, the danger could be lower because other major airlines wouldn’t be affected.
But it just isn’t only American flight attendants who’re demanding pay increases. United Airlines is still under negotiation a brand new contract with its flight attendants. Southwest Airlines agreed to a contract in April that gives pay increases totaling greater than 33% over 4 years. The union that represents Southwest flight attendants, the Transport Workers Union, said the contract gives flight attendants record raises and sets an industry standard.
APFA can also be asking for a 33% increase, with increases of 5%, 4% and one other 4% for the remaining years of a four-year agreement.
The union has also said it can not accept any contract without retroactive pay. Last 12 months, American Airlines paid its pilots $230 million in retroactive payments after negotiations with the pilots’ union.
Hendricks’ message regarding the 17% increase appears to be: We want the entire 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.'”
