Ethan H. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Florida—

Several unions representing major US airlines took up a picket on Tuesday, Feb. 13, to demand better pay, benefits, and working conditions as new contracts are under negotiation this year. Employees of airlines including Allegiant, Frontier, United, Delta, American, and Southwest picketed with signs stating demands for fair contract negotiations among other slogans. Many pilots took to the picket in solidarity with the flight attendants as well.

Robert Payne, a Board Member at Large in the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 577, has provided major insight into some of the demands and conditions being sought by Allegiant, JetBlue, and several other airlines who employ members of the TWU.

“Two-thirds of flight attendants in the United States are in some sort of contract negotiation right now,” Payne told the Red Phoenix. “That includes Allegiant, that includes Southwest, and various other airlines.” The workers of some airlines, such as Delta, have not achieved union status, but are actively pushing for recognition by their employer. Airline attendants have to be even more careful in their workplace due to the lack of union representation. According to a recent news report by The Hill, the union-busting efforts of Delta have gotten so out of hand that the US House of Representatives intervened. A letter to Delta CEO Ed Bastian was issued with support from 140 House representatives. Delta is one of the last major airlines which has yet to unionize.

Payne, a flight attendant with 8 years of employment at Allegiant Airlines, provides the Red Phoenix with examples of what the TWU and other unions are seeking in their new contracts, and why these demands are at the forefront of negotiations.

“We’ve all seen inflation shoot through roof over the last couple of years,” Payne begins. “We’ve all seen a massive increase in hostility towards flight attendants stemming from the pandemic, as it’s not as bad as during the pandemic, but I think every flight attendant knows somebody or has themselves been the victim of physical violence onboard an aircraft – that somebody they’ve worked with has been a victim of violence aboard the aircraft. You couldn’t necessarily say that before the pandemic.” 

Payne’s words are echoed in reporting from several news sources over the span of 2023, including CNN, which reported in March of a man aboard a United Airlines flight who attempted to stab a flight attendant after failing to open an emergency exit on a plane. A few months later, in May, another passenger was filmed repeatedly punching a United Airlines employee on a red-eye flight from San Francisco to Houston.

“What we are looking for in our contract negotiations is: we want pay that respects the fact that we are safety professionals,” Payne states. “The fact that in the last 23 years, [airlines] have had one fatality as the result of an accident of an American commercial flight in the United States is not an accident. The flight attendants and their coordination with [the] flight crew is a big part of why, when something goes wrong, we’ve been able to have a positive outcome almost every single time. We deserve to be paid a living wage that reflects the importance of what it is we do.”

In addition to the threat of violence, flight attendants wrestle with the perception that the job is nothing more than a form of concession. Payne details some of the conditions that may not be considered by passengers and the public. “When you get up in the air, there has by-and-large been a misconception by the by the public – largely created by airlines – that we are waiters and waitresses in the sky and that that’s our job,” he stated. “That’s not by accident; many airlines marketed flight attendants in a very sexist way by using sex appeal to get passengers on aircraft. So this perception is almost like you’re advertising us as ‘Hooters in the Sky’.” Indeed, a 2020 study from Harvard University’s School of Public Health details the high frequency and underreported threat of sexual harassment faced by many flight attendants. The International Journal of Aerospace Psychology disclosed in August 2020 that 26% of North American attendants reported being sexually harassed by passengers, pilots, and even coworkers while on the job. 

The invisible nature of the flight attendant poses a large struggle for employees as customers remain unaware of the level of importance that flight attendants have in the overall success of a flight. “Most of the time you don’t even see us doing our job,” Payne replied. “You don’t see us performing pre-flight [checks] at the beginning of our shifts to make sure all our emergency equipment is okay. You don’t really realize that we’re assessing each passenger as they come on board, making sure they’re coherent – that they’re not intoxicated, that they’re not showing signs of aggression. You don’t necessarily see that when a passenger’s getting upset that we’re trying to defuse that situation, understand what the concern is and try to resolve it in a way that keeps the people around them safe, ourselves included. You don’t see that we are assessing passengers during the flight to make sure that a sudden illness isn’t coming on. When I talk to a passenger that tells me, ‘Oh, well I’m not really feeling well today,’ I’m asking questions. I want to understand why you aren’t feeling well. Is this something I need to be concerned about? Do I need to contact our doctors on the ground? Most of the time I don’t, but I’m always watching to make sure that there’s not an escalation that could put this passenger’s health and safety at risk or the health and safety of the people around them at risk.”

Despite these varying and expansive situations that flight attendants must always be aware of, there are still conditions which must be met for flight attendants to receive their hourly wages. A recent NPR article revealed that that many flight attendants are not actually compensated for the time they spend during boarding, luggage stowing and while passengers are finding their seats. Rather, their pay compensation typically begins only once boarding has ended and the plane doors have closed. 

When asked about pay and workers’ compensation, Payne provided some insight into the extent of these conditions. “For every airline that is out there – with the exception of Delta and Skywest – flight attendants do not get paid until the aircraft pushes back from the gate. For some airlines it’s when the door is shut, [for] other airlines it’s when the brake is disengaged on the aircraft and starts moving back, but during boarding you’re not being paid.”

Other conditions which impede the payment of flight attendants include delays and cancellations. When asked about whether or not workers’ compensation applies to these ambiguous windows of time, Payne told the Red Phoenix, “Flight attendants have to be careful when we are assisting passengers with baggage. Number one: we’re really not supposed to be doing that. There are exceptions for passengers with handicaps, but there is a risk that if you get injured during that boarding time, workers’ [compensation] may not cover the injury that you might sustain if you step outside of what you’re supposed to be doing. Flight attendants have to be extremely cognizant; sometimes passengers think that we’re just being rude. It’s not that; we’re trying to make sure we follow the policies that we have in place so that we don’t get ourselves in trouble.”

Payne continued, “The occupational hazards that everybody thinks of when it comes to working on an airplane – everyone thinks, ‘oh you have to be afraid of plane crashes or terrorism,’ and yes, those are things that you are concerned about, but the thing I am more concerned about than anything is having a physical altercation with a passenger. I am concerned about being hurt in unexpected turbulence, because turbulence can happen without warning. I am concerned about being injured by repetitive motion such as lifting heavy bags into the overhead bins. Those are the things that I am most likely to be impacted on as a flight attendant, and while they’re not as eye-catching for a headline, they’re every bit as detrimental to my safety and to the safety of the people I work with.”

“At the end of the day, different work groups are looking for different solutions to the same problem: wages for flight attendants across the industry have not kept up with inflation.”

Looking further into the pay rates of flight attendants, the US Department of Labor reports that the median income for a flight attendant in 2022 was $63,760, but flight attendant unions report that the bottom 10^th percentile of flight attendants are paid around $38,000 a year, which is just shy of $30,000 below the $67,690 necessary living wage to meet the US National Median income. The top earning flight attendants can make upwards of $97,000, but overall the wages have not kept up with inflation. When asked about pay, Payne stated, “You might see a flight attendant that’s getting a starting pay of $30 an hour at ‘insert airline here’ and think ‘That’s really good! That’s way more than the $10 or $15 an hour I’m making,’ but that flight attendant is only getting paid in block hours. There’s going to be a significant amount of time that’s on the ground that is cleaning the aircraft; that is boarding and deplaning the aircraft; and most significantly, unplanned delays. None of that is being compensated for, except for a per diem that can be quite low, only a few dollars an hour. The only exceptions are Delta and Skywest who have a boarding pay, but even their boarding pay is a fixed amount for a fixed amount of time, so if you have a delay [the pay] doesn’t get extended beyond that fixed amount of time.”

Flight attendant unions are taking into consideration not only pay in-flight, but also pay compensation for time beyond the flight window as well as fair benefits. Issues with fair pay and benefits may explain high turnover rates that airlines are experiencing post-pandemic.

“Across the board during the pandemic, the airline industry saw a lot of turnover with flight attendants,” Payne mentioned. “It’s been easier for larger airlines to recover because there was a time when they used to say that getting a job as a flight attendant for Delta or American was harder than trying to get into Harvard. Now, there’s a lot more demand for labor among the legacy [airlines], so what you’re seeing is a lot of flight attendants are moving from airline to airline chasing better compensation and better working conditions, and that’s because a lot of people chose to retire early; a lot of people chose to leave the industry altogether. I know a lot of flight attendants experienced burnout. When you have to confront passengers over mask issues [on] every single flight for years, it can make your job go from one that you love to one that you dread. I think every flight attendant in the industry felt that.”

Indeed, the flight attendant industry faced a severe turnover rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which changed the nature of their job and brought about swarms of irate and fearful customers. Payne recounts the struggle in making flight safety a priority through the ongoing pandemic.

“We all tried to figure out different ways of coping with [mask mandates]. There are flight attendants who did the bare minimum, checking off a box saying, ‘I did what I needed to do,’ and there are flight attendants who were very zealous in trying to make sure that mask requirements were being enforced. But you knew no matter what approach you were going to take, you were going to get passengers who became angry at you for doing your job, and you would have passengers that were angry at you because they didn’t believe you were doing enough. People were so hostile to each other, and they expected you to mediate the disputes. That created a lot of turnover, and I don’t think the industry has recovered from that.”

“I do believe the public is starting to become more aware of the compensation issues that flight attendants are experiencing, and they’re starting to become cognizant of how much of the disruptions onboard aircrafts are starting to make their way onto TikTok and YouTube,” Payne concluded. “People are starting to become aware of just how dangerous the job can be, so I think there’s growing public sympathy. I think companies really need to understand that if they want to have the support of the traveling public then they need to make sure that they are taking care of the people that the public is interfacing with every single day. Our flight attendants are the face of the company they work for; I am the face of Allegiant Airlines when I work a flight. The public is more likely to have sympathy for us than any other part of the company because they know us, and their relationship with us is the relationship with the company.”

Categories: Interview, Labor, U.S. News

Tags: Interview