Union negotiators representing tens of thousands of flight attendants at United Airlines have finally gotten back around the bargaining table with leaders from the Chicago-based carrier after their members overwhelmingly rejected a tentative new contract in July.
The meeting, which took place over the course of three days late last week, was the first time that the union and the airline have formally met to discuss how they might overcome the current impasse after 71% of flight attendants voted down the airline’s first offer.
The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) had been desperate for its members to accept the first tentative agreement, arguing that the deal was the very best that could be achieved in the current economic and political atmosphere, and that returning to the bargaining table wouldn’t guarantee a better deal.
In fact, the union warned flight attendants that demanding more in a second tentative agreement rarely resulted in airline’s improving the total economic value of a deal and normally meant shifting money from one part of a contract to another.
Despite the warning, however, the majority of flight attendants wanted the union to fight harder for a better deal. In the last few months, the union has been trying to work out exactly what parts of the tentative agreement flight attendants were most unhappy about.
There was even a suggestion that flight attendants had voted down the first tentative agreement because they thought they were meant to – an almost ritual negotiating strategy baked into recent contract bargaining at US airlines, including American Airlines, Southwest, and Alaska Airlines.
In the end, however, the union was able to identify some key areas that most concerned its members, and after initially keeping this list a closely guarded secret, the union has now shared its priorities for upcoming bargaining sessions.
The union says that the first bargaining session was “productive” and that “both sides seem committed to reaching an agreement,” although warned that “touch bargaining” should be anticipated.
As was suspected, United Airlines is also resistant to increasing the total economic value of the deal, so it remains to be seen whether the carrier can be squeezed in this area, or if budgets will simply be shifted around.
As well as unspecified economic improvements, the union has highlighted eight key areas that it wants United to improve upon from the first tentative agreement. Some of these priorities were expected, while others appear to be a compromise that might not go as far as flight attendants have been demanding.
Eight focus areas for United’s flight attendant union in new contract negotiations
- Pay for waiting on the ground between flights
- Less tiring red-eye flying
- No more layover notifications
- More rest on longer flights
- Contract compliance guarantees
- Improvements for reserve flight attendants
- Better layover hotels
- Improvements to health care and retirement benefits
The union originally wanted ‘Ground Duty Pay’ – What’s happened to that?
Until recently, the union had been pressing for what it referred to as ‘ground duty pay,’ which is essentially the concept of paying flight attendants for the entire time they are at work, rather than the current system in which crew members only start earning their hourly pay when the aircraft door is closed and the plane pushed back from the gate.
When the first tentative agreement was unveiled, however, ‘ground duty pay’ had been dropped in favor of ‘boarding pay’ which would mean flight attendants would earn money from the moment boarding starts but not for long waits on the ground between flights.
Known within the industry as ‘sit rigs,’ the union is proposing a compromise in which flight attendants get some form of payment during sits between flights – potentially only for longer sits, which would be designed to dissuade United from scheduling long waits on the ground between flights.
Flight attendants weren’t happy about the language in the first tentative agreement about layover hotels
Flight attendants raised concerns about language in the first tentative agreement about layover hotels, with the union removing a line that stipulated flight attendants had to stay in ‘business class’ hotels and replacing it with language that stated the hotel just had to be in a “tenetable condition.”
The union said the language had been changed to improve layover hotels, although flight attendants still feared they would end up staying in budget lodgings.
Now, the union is proposing reinserting the business class language, as well as getting more hotels in downtown locations, and in many cases, using the same hotels as what pilots stay in.
Will the government shutdown affect the bargaining process?
United and the union had been holding bargaining sessions with the help of a federal mediator. Of course, with the government shutdown still in effect, the federal mediator has been furloughed, and there were concerns that any bargaining sessions would have to be postponed until federal funding was reestablished.
As it turns out, the union was able to secure talks with United even as the shutdown continues into its second month. The next bargaining session isn’t, however, scheduled to take place until early December.
