United Airlines flight attendants are set to get huge pay raises and a slew of other improvements, including Polaris Business Class meals and better layover hotels, if they approve a new tentative labor contract that has been years in the making.
On Tuesday, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) published a so-called ‘high-level summary’ of the hard-fought contract, which includes an immediate average pay raise of 26.9%.
New hire flight attendants are set to go from earning $28.88 per hour to $36.92 per hour, while veteran crew members who have worked for the Chicago-based carrier for at least 13 years will earn as much as $84.78 per hour.
At the end of the five-year contract, the new hire hourly rate will rise to $42, and veteran crew members will be earning $96.58. For the first time ever, flight attendants at United will also earn boarding pay at half the normal hourly flying rate.
In addition, United has agreed to a retro pay bonus, which has been touted as adding $595 million to the total value of the deal. The retro bonus makes up for the five years that flight attendants have gone without a cost of living pay raise while contract negotiations dragged on.
Some of the other improvements include:
- A moratorium on changing United’s existing scheduling system
- Increasing the number of recognized holidays from five to six so as to include Halloween.
- Increasing per diem payments for layover allowances like food and drink.
One focus of the contract negotiations was improving the layover hotels that flight attendants stay in, and that means United has committed to finding better hotels in downtown locations for all layovers of 17 hours or more.
The airline has also dropped a loophole that allowed it to find ‘downtown-like’ hotels, which often meant flight attendants were being put in hotels far away from the downtown area of their intended layover city.
Onboard, flight attendants will now be able to reserve special meals, just like passengers, and crew meals will be of the same quality as Polaris Business Class–a small but meaningful improvement.
Further details are expected to be published in the coming weeks and at that point, flight attendants will be scouring the contract to see what they might have lost as part of the bargaining process.
The union will be holding roadshows at United bases across the country as it seeks to address any questions or concerns about the new contract ahead of a formal vote, which is due to be underway towards the end of July.
If approved, the contract will come into effect on July 30.
Last month, the union told flight attendants that it wouldn’t present a tentative agreement unless it didn’t think this was the best deal that could be achieved, heading off calls to reject the first proposed agreement out of hand as a bargaining tool.
On the face of it, this very much seems like what everyone was expecting from a new deal between United’s flight attendants and the airline.
Big pay raises were a given, as well as some form of boarding pay. Of course, the union has conceded on its attempts to win an industry-first with ground duty pay, but this is hardly surprising.
Other improvements, such as layover hotels, scheduling rules, and crew meals, had been highlighted as important areas for flight attendants, so these don’t come as a surprise, either.
This is unsustainable unless airfares are raised again. Travelers will be footing the bill so that FA will get to travel in a nice new lifestyle, enjoy fancy downtown hotels when they are supposed to rest and Polaris food while they serve us inedible food in economy that they now refuse to eat themselves.
Sorelosers with an inedible knowledge in economics giving their opinion on something that won’t affect them.
Is this hotel thing with downtown-like all about London? Where they complained about being in a smaller town further out? Where it was inconvenient and expensive to go take Instagram photos with Big Ben? Airline I used to work for conceded to the AFA hotel group and moved two cities from “downtown-like” suburbs to actually downtown. In Baltimore and Cleveland. When nothing is open on a weekend or after business hours (since nobody lives there) other than tourist places (per diem goes REAL far at Phillips Crab House, Hard Rock Cafe, and McCormick & Schmick) and the streets weren’t really safe to walk at night. They wanted to go back to the suburbs where they were by a mall with tons of cheap restaurants pretty quick.
Good on the United F/As on the pay improvements. Will be interested to see how the crew meals thing goes… is it Polaris meals, or Polaris-like?
We already get Polaris meals, but we don’t get to pre-order the meals. United FAs have been receiving Polaris meals on all international flights since 2016. The only added benefit is that we will be able to pre-order which meal we want with the new contract.
Now will they stop griping about serving a more elaborate Polaris meal with actual proper coursing of the meal with current staffing levels?
The pay scale represents a .93¢ raise in purchasing power after accounting for inflation since the previous contract became amendable. The top end pay at DOS+5 relies on CPI lower than 3% during the life of the contract just to maintain purchasing power. The retro pay claws back a small portion of the lost wages during protracted negotiations. Meanwhile United has posted record profits multiple years since COVID and during the life of this contract (2016), engaged in billions of dollars worth of stock buybacks, and doubled the CEO’S compensation package this year alone. Fuck you pay me.