Late last month, flight attendants at United Airlines resoundingly rejected a tentative new contract that had been years in the making. Now the union, which represents crew members at the Chicago-based carrier, is trying to work out what went so horribly wrong.
Around 92% of flight attendants took part in the official ballot, and of those, 71% voted to reject what the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) had described as an “industry-leading” contract that surpassed recent pay deals at American Airlines and Delta.
The union must now go back to the bargaining table in an attempt to secure a better deal, but before it does so, it has to work out why the tentative agreement was rejected – despite assurances that this was the best deal that the union could negotiate.
Tens of thousands of flight attendants have been sent a survey to work out their biggest gripes with the contract, as well as any other reasons why they voted no to the agreement.
One leading theory that the union wants to test is whether flight attendants voted ‘No’ simply because they believe this is an almost mandatory thing to do with the first tentative agreement that is put towards a vote.
“The survey kept asking things like ‘Did you vote no cuz you should always vote no?”’… They should be more concerned with what they did wrong instead of blaming us”
An anonymous United Airlines flight attendant
There could be some element of truth to this. In recent years, flight attendants at American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Southwest have all rejected the first tentative agreement before approving the second deal put towards a vote.
This approach has been replicated in other airline workgroups, leading to the belief that workers should never accept the first offer.
In the approach to the first ballot in July, United’s flight attendant union went to great lengths to explain why this isn’t necessarily a good negotiating tactic – especially in light of the current economic and political environment.
In many cases, the union cautioned that the total value of a contract doesn’t normally rise and that, in most cases, money is simply shifted around.
The survey will, however, inform the union what elements of the proposed contract it has to concentrate on in the next round of negotiations. One area that might be highlighted is the issue of unpaid work – a subject that has gained worldwide attention following a strike by flight attendants at Air Canada.
United Airlines flight attendants are currently only paid for the time they spend in the air, which is measured from the time that the plane pushes back from the gate to the time it arrives at its destinations.
Ground-based duties like boarding, deplaning, and moving from one aircraft to the next during domestic duties go unpaid.
The flight attendant union initially fought for all time on the ground to be paid, but accepted an offer from United just to pay flight attendants at a reduced rate for boarding time.
The union never explained why it dropped its ‘ground duty pay‘ demand, and some flight attendants are furious that they will still spend many hours at work unpaid.
There’s still time for the union to work out its bargaining strategy, as a federal mediator who is overseeing negotiations between the flight attendants and United has penciled in the next bargaining session in December 2025.
The first bargaining session is expected to kick off on December 9 in Chicago and will last for four days, with further bargaining sessions already in the diary for January, February, and March 2026.
It’s really patronizing to think that the flight attendants didn’t have good reasons to reject the deal.
I voted no.
Also told them why in the survey with back story.
Having been on the previous Continental contact, any time your contract was breached something was done about it. There was accountability by the company.
After the common metal merger and the new contract, we (on the Continental side) were introduced to the grievance system. No more accountability. You wrote about what happened and hoped something could be done about it.
Like:
Misconnecting your last leg of three at night and assuming you’d layover. Nope. Your crew is now working somewhere else that is still within legality for a crew that went illegal.
Ok
But you don’t have a hotel assigned from reassignment/drafting at the new layover that a crew went illegal for (and definitely had a hotel assigned previously).
Now your 3 hour red-eye lands at 5am in Tampa from Denver and you have a 10 hour layover. Still no hotel assigned after landing, deplaning, and debrief. So you now spend your layover time contacting United (which if anyone has, knows you’re in for a touch tone and hold service party).
50 minutes go by and you finally get a hold of someone who assigns you a hotel.
Great! Right?
No.
We get to the hotel at 6am. The hotel staff tells us there aren’t any rooms. So, United didn’t even bother checking for availability. Or even give us the original rooms from the crew that went illegal.
Guess what we have to do?
Touchtone holding service to get a new hotel.
Another 45 minutes goes by and our new hotel is the Tampa airport hotel (inside).
We also need to get back to the airport from our current hotel.
ALL OF THIS IS BURNING YOUR 10 HOUR LAYOVER
You know, the free from duty thing.
Get to the hotel. Get our keys. Go to sleep.
Wake up, argue about what happened with scheduling to the “you had legal rest period assigned” reason and back to another fantastic journey of a 13hr duty day.
Oh yeah. File this grievance form for the union about what happened.
Not the only time this occurred.
Was left stranded in LAX from 9pm to 4:50am waiting for a hotel update and pairing modification.
It happened at 4:50am. But they claimed my layover started at 9pm. My show time was 11am.
Again. Grievance.
F@#k this union not knowing why some of us voted “no.”
They have the ingredient list at their fingertips in grievance forms of what to do.
Master and up AFA have no idea what it’s like to work the line and the contract they gave us now. Clearly no f@#$ing idea on this one we voted down either.
If the union reps. understood that, legally, people have to be paid for ALL HOURS WORKED, flight crews wouldn’t be in this position. If flight attendants understood the courts have allowed them to be paid 2:1 duty rig, so 50% ground pay is legal as long as it’s above the state min. wage of their base, they’d have a better understanding of what’s happening. I think one big issue is that union reps. are clueless &, therefore, are unable to explain their standing to their members. Union reps. need to gain more knowledge of state labor laws. This will assist in moving the industry forward,