American Airlines flight attendants say their pay is so low, they fight for airplane meals to save money and sleep in their cars—and they're ready to strike
American Airlines flight attendants say their pay is so low, they fight for airplane meals to save money and sleep in their cars—and they're ready to strike
American Airlines and their flight attendants’ union will head to Washington for negotiations next week.
Ready to strike??? Ready, you should have burned that fucking company down already
92Flight attendants are covered by the Railway Labor Act. They can't actually strike. The President can forcibly prevent them from striking. There are serious penalties to be had for any kind of illegal strike.
So what's been going on instead is an "unorganized" definitely-not-a-job-action where some individual flight attendants do a bad job on service while still fulfilling all of their safety duties.
31
Do they still have that bullshit deal of only being paid during flight?
63The requirement should be that any time an employer makes a demand of an employee's time, they pay.
FA waiting on your plane to arrive that's 6 hours late? Pay up.
15 Apple store employees lined up and waiting to get searched by a single manager after a shift? Pay up.
Require an employee to respond to phone calls or issues after hours? That's not "after hours", that's hours. Pay up.
Make an employee commute to an office for a job that can be accomplished from home? Believe it or not, pay the hell up.
Making demands of a person's time for a job is part of the job. They should be compensated for it.
99Yes.
8
Every company does this. They pay essentially minimum wage and even lower if there are delays, considering hours spent not in the air. I can't believe all FAs haven't struck (striked?).
33Pretty sure it's "striked", but you could use "haven't gone on strike" to avoid the question altogether.
22I like to use "stricken" to add an element of confusion
2
Do they maybe fall under the same situation that the FAA/Air Traffic Control falls under... where it's illegal to strike thanks to Reagan?
6It’s this one
2
Not a FA, but FWIW:
It's still looked at as a "glamor job". What other gig lets you travel everywhere and have hotels paid for in metropolitan areas around the world? It can be pretty cool if you get a good crew, it doesn't feel much like work on the good days. See the sights, bring home a bunch of international goodies for the family and friends, it can be great!
The flip side is:
The glamor wears off quick after you realize that you're not staying over in London, NYC, Tokyo or any other attractive international destination after one flight there, a long layover, then one flight back. You're junior so you don't have a planned flight schedule for the month, on call for 4,5,6 days in a row, you've been assigned a couple day-trips necessitating trips to the airport early in the AM and not getting done until late at night, then get assigned a multi-day 12+ leg trip that has you overnighting in Pittsburgh, Midland Texas, and Raleigh NC. You're exhausted, got reassigned thanks to weather delays, now you've got a Fresno overnight instead of Pittsburgh, all the passengers have been a PITA because it's your fault the airline can't control the weather. No food because of the delays and you've been running from flight to flight and you have been subsisting on diet coke and pretzels, tired because the overnights have been whittled down to minimum rest, and when you finally get to your two days off you have to commute home, feed the cat, do laundry, sleep in your own bed for one night and then commute back to base to be ready for your next on-call stretch. (many crew don't "live" in base, you can't afford to live in a NYC airline base on $27k a year, they get a crashpad, usually shared with multiple roomates to defray the cost of a place you just need to hang out at for the night before a trip you can't fly in for same-day or wait for a on-call assignment).
So a LOT of flight attendants don't survive the first few years when they realize that you need to be at the airline for probably 25+ years before you might approach the "glamor" side, the pay sucks, being on-call (reserve) for years and years... You can actually make decent money if you tough it out, but it;s a long road. People like the image, but it's a really steep price to finally make it to good.
29Thank you. I was just wondering why the hell anyone would work for AA to begin with. This helps explain some of the draw.
4I work for the railroad and it's a very similar story. The way we treat people in the transportation industry is unsustainable and frankly quite dangerous. Having to be on call six days a week with no guarantee if you even are going to be home on the seventh really makes you feel like a second class citizen. At one point in time these types of jobs were appealing because the pay and benefits more than made up for the abusive work schedule but now you are lucky if your pay increases even cover the cost of inflation. I'm sure the airline unions have the same issues the railroad unions have where benifits get widdled away as those with seniority sell out the new hires for deals that only benefit those already employed. Our unions have been doing that for such a long period of time it's almost unfathomable to hear what benifits we used to have.
3
There will be a nationwide multi corporation FA picket on Thursday at major airports. Get out and support them!
24Because you're supposed to tip them. Duh... /s
19DON'T GIVE ANYONE FUCKING IDEAS!
24
Just had a traumatic experience on an American airline flight. Any subs to share about this on Lemmy?
15*Why not right here?
2Because !workreform@lemmyworld is the wrong community for what I want to talk about.
1
Serious question, wtf is all the money going??
Everything is fucking expensive as shit, yet somehow none of the workers are getting paid? And I'm not seeing AA posting some trillion dollar profits every quarter.
What is going on?
151000 people need to suffer so 2 people can have more money that they can spend in 10 lifetimes
7Tax evasion which eventually trickles down to the highest spots in the company pocketing the profits and ignoring the needs of the people who do the real work.
5Tax evasion which eventually trickles down to the highest spots in the company pocketing the profits and ignoring the needs of the people who do the real work.
So trickle down economics?
4
Right to the top.
3
The pay website won't allow me to read it. How much are they actually getting paid right now?
7Since 2014, when the previous contract was negotiated, flight attendants have been left with measly starting salaries even as inflation has shot up 33%, Hedrick said. According to an employment verification letter from American, which circulated on Reddit a few weeks ago, an entry-level flight attendant can expect to make $27,315 a year, before taxes. (Like many airlines, American pays its attendants only for the time the plane is in the air. Boarding passengers, waiting between flights, and traveling to and from the airport all mean flight attendants typically work about two hours for each “flight hour” they are paid.)
With American’s proposed 17% increase, the starting wage jumps to $31,959 per year, or $35.5 per flight hour. That rate pushes junior flight attendants who live alone above the level for qualifying for food stamps in states like Massachusetts or Florida.
Most new flight attendant hires are required to live in cities like Dallas, Miami, and New York, which have high costs of living that they cannot afford, Hedrick noted.
American flight attendants are sleeping in their cars, she said. Some of them fight for trips just for the chance to eat the plane meals, if the pilots don’t take their meals first.
1327k and bunches of wasted time....yeah. that's idiotic. I can't believe they even get applications.
12That's ridiculous. They'd make more door dashing a few hours per day.
5
And for a brief instant Steven Slater was a god
1