After nearly six years, United Airlines is becoming increasingly confident that it can lock down a new contract deal with tens of thousands of flight attendants after the latest round of mediated negotiations concluded with the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) in Chicago on Friday.
The crew union shared the same optimism, saying that “substantial progress” had been made during the week-long bargaining session and that the two sides were now “very close” to reaching a tentative agreement.
Last month, United told its flight attendants that its offer to the union would make them the highest-paid crew workforce of any airline in the United States for the duration of the contract, from the most junior new-hire flight attendants to veteran flight attendants who have worked at United for decades.
There is, however, some doubt over how exactly the two sides are going to square their difference over concessions that United wants to insert into the tentative agreement in order to pay for pay raises and other contract enhancements.
At the heart of the dispute is United’s desire to introduce a new scheduling system known as a ‘preferential bidding system’ or PBS, which it says would make flight attendant rostering more efficient, helping it save money in the future, and, therefore, releasing cash to pay for the wage increases.
Although PBS is already in use at several other major U.S.-based carriers, including American Airlines and Delta, as well as at Alaska Airlines, where flight attendants are also represented by AFA-CWA, the union has been deeply opposed to the system being introduced at United.
United’s flight attendants have repeatedly stated that they will not accept any concessions, making PBS a red line item that it will not accept in a tentative agreement.
Despite this apparent gulf between the two sides, it’s widely expected that a deal will be announced later this month when the final round of federally-mediated bargaining is set to take place.
If all goes to plan, a tentative agreement is likely to be revealed on March 27.
In a leaked internal memo reviewed by PYOK, United Airlines told flight attendants that it had “made progress on several other areas that the AFA has indicated are priorities for you, including wage rates and alignment on language for redeye rules and for sit pay.”
The memo continued: “Our discussions centered around the pathways to delivering those priorities while preserving our industry-leading pay proposal and ensuring the overall agreement remains balanced, competitive, and financially sustainable for our airline.”
“While there is still work to do, we are encouraged by the progress made this week and remain confident we’re on track toward a new tentative agreement.”
Although the flight attendant union has been adamant that it would not accept concessions and would even move to take strike action if concessions remained on the table, it has postponed a so-called ‘day of action’ on March 19, given how close they are to reaching a deal with United.
This isn’t the first time that a tentative deal has been reached. Last summer, the first tentative agreement (known as TA1) was resoundingly rejected by frontline crew members when it was put to a vote.
The result shocked the union, and it was forced to go back to United with a new list of demands to appease its members. While United has been working to adopt these demands into an updated contract, the airline has maintained that it is not willing to accept higher overall costs.
