Travelers were faced with picketing flight attendants at airports in Dallas and other cities on Tuesday, the Worldwide Flight Attendant Day of Action, which the Association of Professional Flight Attendants called the “largest collective action in the history of the profession.”
Thousands of flight attendants from various airlines declared “war on corporate greed” by picketing at dozens of airports nationwide and in the UK for Worldwide Flight Attendant Day of Action. Pickets were planned in Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., among others, according to the Guardian.
The planned protests were informational only and not intended to disrupt flights or airline schedules, NPR reported.
For the past several years, flight attendants have been pushing their employers for better contracts, improved working conditions, and improved operational functioning of the airlines.
“Flight attendants have shown up here on their days off because they are angry at Southwest Airlines,” Transport Workers Union 556 President Lyn Montgomery said during a September protest in Denver, Colorado. “It’s not a great place to work. Flight attendants are feeling abused with extended duty days, massive reschedules, no certainty in their work life.”
“… [T]hey are not able to make their bills with the rising cost of inflation,” Montgomery added. “… They’ve been without a raise since November 1 of 2019. And they are fed up, they need to see that they can meet inflation and pay their bills. They’re having to work more just to survive, and they’re ready to fight.”
Pay is the primary issue flight crews are disputing.
According to the job site Indeed, flight attendants earn an average of $26.94 per hour. The hours can be strenuous, and flight attendants must be on call and ready to hit the tarmac at a moment’s notice. Additionally, most flight attendants are not paid unless a plane is in the air, meaning they are not compensated for the duration passengers are boarding flights or for downtime or wait time between flights.
Mediators rejected an offer from American Airlines that would have given flight attendants an 11% raise up front and 2% increases each year. The union is seeking 33% up front and 6% annual increases, according to ABC.
“We haven’t had a raise in five years. Our flight attendants have seen the very rich contracts that the pilots did get, and they expect American Airlines to come to the table,” said Julie Hedrick, president of the union at American.
“We appreciate and respect our flight attendants’ right to picket and understand that is their way of telling us the importance of getting a contract done — and we hear them,” American said in a statement Tuesday.
One point of contention in the debate is the bonuses that executives receive themselves. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan received a near-$200,000 year-end bonus in 2022, according to Bloomberg, bringing his annual salary to $5.3 million. In 2021, Jordan brought in $3 million, including bonuses. Now, flight attendants want a cut of that payout.
Southwest offered the union a deal in December that would have made flight attendants working for the company the highest-paid in the industry. Still, the union rejected the deal, according to reporting by Reuters.
