unions @lemmy.ml jackalope @lemmy.ml 12mo ago

American Airlines Flight Attendants Authorize Strike With 99.5 Percent Support

truthout.org American Airlines Flight Attendants Authorize Strike With 99.5 Percent Support

The union says flight attendants haven’t gotten a raise throughout the pandemic.

20 comments

Reminder that flight attendants only get paid while the plane doors are closed. All of the flight prep, onboarding, stowing baggage, deplaning afterwards, cleanup afterwards, etc is entirely unpaid.
- I still don’t understand how that’s legal.
  
  Their place of employment is the airplane, they have duties that are required to be performed before and after passengers embark, they should be payed the moment they step foot on the aircraft.
  
  It’s not legal for a retail store to not pay you while closing up the store, so why is legal for airlines to not pay attendant when the plane is open.
  
  The funniest part of this is that there's approved union contact in place that agrees with this statement. How is it that both sides could agree to what appears to be illegal?
- That’s insane. Especially considering the scope of thier ‘doors closed’ normal job is a nightmare.
  
  I had to google this because it is so absurd I didn’t believe it:
  
  https://flightattendant.pro/flight-attendant-pay-explained/#:~:text=The flight attendant will continue,hotel room for the night.
99.5% (with 93% of eligible employees voting) is a stunning number. But also one that tragically highlights how bad it has gotten. It's very hard to get so many people to agree on much these days. But they virtually all agree that the pay is too damn low.
- In the second quarter of 2023, the company reported profits of $1.34 billion, with revenue rising to a quarterly record for the company of $14 billion.
  
  It hasn't gotten that bad for everyone. What a broken system.
  
  So AA has ~130,000 employees so at $1.34B that's about $10,000/employee. Seems like they got plenty in the old war chest to be giving out raises left and right so surely that's what they're doing, right?
Dont be too disruptive now or Biden might stop you
- Are all the downvotes forgetting about the railroad strike?
  
  I agree that it was disruptive, but neutering a union action makes it near pointless.
  
  Except the rail union got what they wanted, and credited Biden's administration for making it happen.
  
  https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Unionize unionize unionize!

All the support to them
Pretty risky calling in an air strike on American soil
TLDR: they can start striking as soon as 30 days, pending the cooling off period and regulator support. They are looking for an immediate 35% pay raise with annual raises of 6%
99.5 percent support with a .5 percent margin of error

20 comments