Alaska Airlines has managed to reach a tentative contract agreement with the union that represents thousands of flight attendants just two weeks after the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) threatened to take the next steps towards going on strike if a deal couldn’t be reached.
On Friday afternoon, the union announced that a new ‘record’ contract had been tentatively agreed following a ‘intense’ week of negotiations in Washington DC that had been overseen by federal mediators.
The union did not immediately release details of the tentative agreement because some additional work to ‘clean up’ contract language is still ongoing, but Alaska Airlines has already shared some of the highlights of what the carrier has offered the union.
In the last few weeks, Alaska Airlines had put forward a proposal that included boarding pay, pay raises, and per diem raises over a two-year period.
In February, Alaska’s flight attendants voted overwhelmingly in favor of taking strike action if a deal couldn’t be done, with 99.48% of crew members saying they supported a walkout on a turnout of 94% of eligible flight attendants.
Since then, negotiations had been dragging on, but ahead of scheduled talks moderated by the National Mediation Board earlier this month, the union had put Alaska Airlines on notice that it would request a release to strike unless a deal was done quickly.
The union has complained that flight attendant pay at Alaska Airlines has lagged well behind the rest of the industry with a recent survey finding that nearly one in ten crew members at the carrier had experienced some form of homelessness in the past year.
Over a third of flight attendants said they had relied on food stamps or been forced to visit a food bank in the past year, while 29% of crew members said they commuted more than 100 miles to their base so that they could live in a cheaper city.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told us: “We are pleased to announce we have reached a tentative agreement (TA) with our flight attendant union, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), on a new contract.”
“We’re grateful to our colleagues at AFA who bargained with determination and dedication to our flight attendants. With our combined efforts, we’ve been able to reach an agreement that provides quality of life and continued career growth at Alaska.”
Matt’s take
This is an excellent result for flight attendants at Alaska Airlines, although crew members haven’t yet had the opportunity to scrutinize the tentative agreement and, there’s still the possibility that flight attendants might feel that the union should be pushing for even more.
That’s exactly what happened at Southwest Airlines when flight attendants rejected a tentative agreement in a controversial ballot before the union managed to negotiate an ‘industry-leading’ contract that has shaken up negotiations at other carriers.
While the AFA has done well in securing a tentative agreement with Alaska Airlines, there has been no such success for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents crew members at American Airlines.
On Thursday, APFA said last-ditch talks had failed and that the NMB would now decide whether to release flight attendants at American Airlines to strike. No deadline has, however, been set for when the decision will be reached.
