More than 30,000 flight attendants at United Airlines have waited nearly six years for a new contract and a pay raise, and everything now hinges on how the very last round of mediated bargaining between the Chicago-based carrier and the flight attendant union goes this week.
Four days of intense negotiations will kick off in Washington DC on Tuesday, and we should know by Friday afternoon whether the two sides have been able to lock down a tentative agreement that will be put before crew members for a vote.
But with key items still outstanding, could this final round of bargaining be any worse timed for the flight attendants?
The price of jet fuel is skyrocketing, United Airlines is planning to slash its schedule by 5% for the entire summer period, the ongoing partial federal shutdown is piling pressure on the national airspace system, and there’s still so much uncertainty as to what comes next in the Middle East.
This is exactly the kind of situation that the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) had warned its members about when the union reached a tentative deal with United last summer.
At the time, the union warned that the deal might be the best they could achieve given the changing political landscape… if the tentative agreement was rejected, there was simply no guarantee that a better deal could be reached, and, in a worse case scenario, it might even get worse.
Flight attendants did, however, reject that first agreement. In fact, they overwhelmingly spurned the deal, forcing the union to go back to the negotiating table in the hope of securing more pay and improved benefits.
For its part, United Airlines says it has tabled a deal that will make its crew members the best paid in the U.S. aviation industry – for the duration of the contract, no matter their seniority.
That bold promise does, though, come with a big caveat: flight attendants would need to accept concessions, such as the removal of ‘personal time off’ and the introduction of controversial new scheduling software known as a “Preferential Bidding System.”
Bringing in PBS would allow United to improve its pay offer and introduce so-called ‘sit rig’ pay for the first time, because scheduling would become more efficient.
Up until this point, the union has been adamant that it will not accept any concessions. It has long argued that, given United’s profitability, the airline should dig deeper and not make pay guarantees contingent on flight attendants accepting compromises in other areas of the contract.
Last week, United chief executive Scott Kirby told staff that the airline would not be cutting back its massive investment plans in the face of rising fuel prices and market uncertainty, but it will be interesting to see whether United presents a more nuanced take during this make-or-break bargaining session.
Should a tentative agreement be reached, the union’s master executive council must first approve the deal before it can be presented to members. Last summer, this process took several days, with only headline figures initially released.
“We are going to keep the pressure on and work hard to finalize the remaining details of this Tentative Agreement,” the union told its members earlier this week.
“There is a lot going on in the world right now, but our focus is on getting an agreement that works for us and our futures.”
For all the talk of how chintzy the Company has been, IMO AFA is equally culpable in botching the first TA. Hard to be sympathetic when a TA misses the mark so widely… that’s an indictment of the NC, not the parties. Hopefully they can get a deal done and move on, it’s time.