“Join us on Tuesday, February 13, for picketing at over 30 airports worldwide,” says the call posted online Jan. 3 by three unions representing nearly 100,000 flight attendants. “Stand in solidarity with us to demand that airline management stop the stall tactics and negotiate the contracts we are due.” More than three-quarters of these workers are locked in longstanding contract fights with the airlines, including at United, American, Alaska and Southwest.
The united call by the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and Transport Workers Union Local 556 says, “Our time on the job must be compensated. We have earned long-term security and benefits.”
These flight attendants are working under contracts that have been extended for years. Buried under massive red tape by the infamous anti-union Railway Labor Act, they face no-strike provisions that the bosses take advantage of to force endless delays. It’s the same law used last fall by Democratic President Joseph Biden and Congress to block a rail strike and impose a contract that union members had rejected.
Far from the glamorous life sold to the public, most flight attendants are only paid from when the plane door closes for takeoff to when it opens after landing, forcing them to work unpaid hours and hours loading and unloading passengers and during flight delays.
Beginning flight attendants are hired onto reserve status — and can stay there for years — with no set schedule, on call whenever the company needs someone. It makes it nearly impossible to plan a family life or any other activities.
Alaska Airlines flight attendants told the Seattle Times that with the pay tiers in their long-expired contract, workers with less than 10 years’ seniority barely get by on poverty-level wages. Some survive by qualifying for food stamps and housing assistance.
“When you go to work, you see all these bright shining faces,” flight attendant Rebecca Owens said. “You don’t see the difficulty that people are facing.”
“Jobs across our economy are in crisis right now,” Sara Nelson, Association of Flight Attendants international president, said. And with labor power being shown in action, from the autoworkers to UPS workers and Hollywood writers, “there’s an expectation now across the working class that things are going to get better.”
The Militant urges its readers to spread the word and help build solidarity far and wide for these Feb. 13 actions. For more information on locations and times, go to the unions’ websites.