Flight attendants at United Airlines will take part in a strike authorization vote as negotiations for a new contract enter a new and “critical” phase, the union which represents crew members at the Chicago-based carrier announced on Tuesday.
The strike authorization vote has long been expected, and the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) has been warning since at least last October that it was considering calling for a strike ballot unless United met its demands for big pay raises.
“United Flight Attendants can’t afford to wait for improvements,” commented Ken Diaz, the president of the United chapter of the larger AFA union. “We deserve an industry-leading contract, and we are ready to show United management that we will do whatever it takes,” Diaz continued.
Diaz claims that United management is deliberately stalling on reaching an agreement – a tactic that the labor movement believes is being repeated across the industry in an effort to save money by paying wages that haven’t kept up with rising inflation.
Calling a strike authorization vote is becoming a routine part of the negotiation process and is meant to demonstrate to federal negotiation mediators that employees are not only serious about escalating the dispute but that they back their union.
A strike authorization vote was seen as crucial in landing an industry-leading pay deal for flight attendants at Southwest, while a similar vote at Alaska Airlines is also credited by AFA as helping flight attendants at the Seattle-headquartered carrier win a new tentative agreement.
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents crew members at American Airlines, also believes that its calls to be released to strike on the back of massive support from its members has helped pile pressure on management to improve its pay offer in recent weeks.
The strike authorization vote at United is, however, significant given the fact that there hasn’t been one since 2005, and that came during bankruptcy negotiations in what was a very different economic situation for the airline.
One of the key demands from the AFA’s United chapter is for the airline to introduce a pay concept known as ‘Ground Time Pay’ – which would see flight attendants paid half their hourly rate whenever they are on the clock but not physically flying.
Traditionally, US-based flight attendants have only been paid their hourly from the moment the plane pushes back from the gate to the point at which it reaches its destination.
That means flight attendants can work for hours without getting paid anything – especially if they are working several flights in a day. Delta Air Lines and Skywest have already introduced ‘boarding pay’ to address this situation, while Alaska’s tentative agreement also includes a boarding pay provision.
But, as the name suggests, boarding pay only covers the time that flight attendants are on the plane and not the time between the flights or the moment from when they clock in at the airport.
Strike vote ballots will be sent to the 28,000 United flight attendants and the ballot will open on August 1. The voting will close on August 28 and the results will likely be published very soon afterwards.
It’s expected that flight attendants will overwhelmingly vote in favor of a strike authorization but it would still be a very long way before any walkout could take place and the National Mediation Board would have to declare an impasse before releasing the two sides into a 30-day cooling off period.
The NMB has been incredibly reluctant to release flight attendants at American Airlines into a cooling-off period and the upcoming Presidential election has made the possibility of this happening even more remote.
In a statement, a spokesperson for United Airlines said in response to the strike authorization vote: “We’ve met productively twice a month with AFA negotiators through the mediation process they requested in December, and we look forward to continuing to work toward the industry-leading contract our flight attendants deserve.”
