United Airlines flight attendants are set to vote on whether to authorize a strike if a new employment contract is not agreed by the end of July, marking the first time such a vote has taken place at the airline since its 2005 bankruptcy negotiations.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), which represents around 28,000 flight attendants employed by United Airlines, announced last week that members will vote on whether to authorize a strike if a deal is not secured by July 31. The voting will then take place between August 1 to August 28.
In addition to significant double-digit base pay increase, United Flight attendants are demanding more pay time at work including on the ground, retroactive pay to the amendable date, schedule flexibility, and more. It’s important to note here that the only other major airlines that pay flight attendants for boarding time are Delta Air Lines, which is non-unionized, and SkyWest.
“We deserve an industry leading contract, and we are ready to show United management that we will do whatever it takes”, said Ken Diaz, the United chapter President of the AFA-CWA. He added, “There is no time to waste. Our negotiations are at a critical state, the issues are clear, and the time to act is now”.
The urgency of Diaz’s words sits at odds with AFA-CWA’s strategy to date, which has largely consisted of purposefully stalling and seeing how the negotiations with other airline attendants play out. While it has been in discussions nearly as long as American Airlines, it has held back from authorizing a strike because it wants to use the deal struck by APFA (which represents American flight attendants) as a template. Given that American seems to be closing in on a deal, it’s hardly surprising that the AFA-CWA believe now is the best time to start threatening a walkout.
Despite the framing in the media and the posturing from the AFA-CWA, the reality is that staff at United do not want to strike. They are behind American, Southwest, and Alaska in terms of reaching a deal, making it even less desirable that they would want a further delay to their already protracted negotiations.
The vote is simply a bargaining tool. The AFA-CWA even acknowledged in their press release that “recent strike authorization votes propelled negotiations forward at Alaska, Southwest, and American Airlines”. These ballots are increasingly being seen as a mere formality to allow negotiations to continue rather than a real, existential threat to United management.
And even if members vote overwhelmingly for a strike, cabin crew are unlikely to be grounded. This is because under the Railway Labor Act, the AFA-CWA and United are required to undertake federally mediated talks overseen by the National Mediation Board (NMB). Only if the NMB decides that the negotiations have reached an impasse, are both parties released into a 30-day “cooling off” period leading to a strike deadline. The NMB is typically very reluctant to call time on mediation to allow a strike, especially given that it is an election year.
To an onlooker, it seems that the AFA-CWA is changing strategy now, not because they have reached a “critical stage in negotiations”, but because they want to distract their members from the reality that other airlines have been making progress on pay while they appear to have been sitting on their hands. It’s also increasingly hard for the union to justify why United flight attendants remain on pre-pandemic wages when peers at Delta Air Lines have seen their wages increase several times in recent years.
To add more insult to injury, United flight attendants have watched as their Chief Executive Scott Kirby took home nearly $18.6 million in 2023, up from $9.3 million the previous year. The disclosure earlier in the year sparked protests by United flight attendants at major hubs across the US and internationally. The irony is that the AFA-CWA organized the protests while at the same time, delaying a deal that could have reduced the disparity in wages between United flight attendants and its peers. According to data from Indeed, Delta flight attendants make an average of $35.81 per hour, while United flight attendants are on $31.61, Southwest flight attendants are on $28.52, Alaska flight attendants are on $27.12, and American flight attendants are on $15.
At the time of writing, the details of the American contract have not been disclosed but the AFA-CWA will be praying that the terms are so generous, that the three years of waiting were worth it for the precedent it sets in their negotiations. The alternative is that AFA-CWA took a risk that has not paid off and will be forced to accept a deal for United flight attendants far below their original expectations.
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