American Airlines Flight Attendants Authorize Strike With 99.5 Percent Support
https://truthout.org/articles/american-airlines-flight-attendants-authorize-strike-with-99-5-percent-support/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml351
Comments23https://truthout.org/articles/american-airlines-flight-attendants-authorize-strike-with-99-5-percent-support/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
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?
How can a union contract supersede state and federal law?
If a contract existed before a law, there can be an exception. It's rather unfortunate.
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%20flight%20attendant%20will%20continue,hotel%20room%20for%20the%20night.
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.
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?
They're not. And don't call me Shirley.
Unionize unionize unionize!
All the support to them
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%
Seriously, what in the fuck is wrong with the USA? The government has to approve a strike? What interest would the government have in approving a strike?
It's from a 1926 law targeted at Railways, and then expanded to Airlines a decade or so later. This system was originally negotiated between Unions and the railway companies with the intent to reduce disruption to critical transportation systems but it really ended up hurting the unions leverage.
Thank you for the explanation :)
Pretty risky calling in an air strike on American soil
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
fuck IBEW they were anti-collective bargaining Biden apologists before Biden banned rail unions right to strike. They're electrical workers not rail workers, they always had sick days.
As the press release I linked explains, IBEW represents a lot of rail workers, though not all. Sick leave agreements have also been reached with several other rail workers unions, which means that around 60% of rail workers now have sick leave. That's still less than it should be, and the unions should not stop pushing until 100% of workers have sick leave, but it's progress.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
IBEW represents no rail workers. they have one small branch representing a few electrical workers that work at railroads. But because they've been the biggest Biden apologists, rich folks have latched onto them as the face of rail unions. Look, they're happy to not be allowed to collectively bargain.
Unions shouldnt stop pushing, they were fucking banned from pushing for sick leave. How can they ever bargain for anything ever again after this precedent?
99.5 percent support with a .5 percent margin of error