American Airlines Gives Poverty Verification Letters To Newly-Hired Flight Attendants
American Airlines flight attendants haven’t had a raise since 2019. At the end of that year their contract became amendable, and the value of their wages has been substantially eroded since then by more than 20% inflation.
- A new contract was delayed first by the pandemic
- The process of negotiating all the myriad details is a long one. The current agreement (that flight attendants didn’t even approve) runs over 325 pages. And that doesn’t count a separate 15 page attendance policy and 18 page uniform policy among others.
- Plus, union politics (effectively needing to wait for incumbent officers to be re-elected) meant further delay.
Boston-based first and second year American Airlines flight attendants are eligible for food stamps. American Airlines even gives newly-hired flight attendants a letter attesting to their poverty.
The letter states that a new flight attendant will have a “projected annual salary [of] $27,315 per year before incentives and taxes” and concludes, “Any courtesy you can provide would be appreciated.”
The actual letter AA gives new FAs when they move to NYC, Miami, Boston, Dallas etc.
byu/containment-failure inamericanairlines
Here’s the flight attendant pay scale from the current contract. Their last raise was in January 2019.
Here are some key things to understand about this pay.
- The lineholder minimum guarantee is 71 hours per month. A flight attendant working reserve is guaranteed 75 hours per month. Many cabin crew do work more than that.
- Those are hours from push back to arrival. Those hours do not include time at the airport, connecting between flights, or boarding planes.
Flight attendants can make more than the minimum in the American Airlines letter, but it’s tough to live on $30,000 a year at the start. In inflation-adjusted terms that’s what the $21,000 I made right out of school is worth today. Those were some of the best times of my life! Lower incomes can be fine with roommates, without unexpected major expenses, and if you’re not trying to support a family. Many flight attendants do side work, though a second job is tough since they don’t have consistent schedules month-to-month.
American Airlines introduced a profit-sharing program for its employees, including flight attendants, in 2016. This decision was part of an effort to improve employee relations and align the company more closely with industry standards, as other major carriers like Delta and United already had profit-sharing plans in place. American’s CEO had argued that flight attendants don’t contribute to profit so shouldn’t get a piece of it.
In April 2017 the airline announced unilateral wage increases for pilots and flight attendants. This decision was outside of the regular contract negotiation process and was intended to correct a pay disparity with Delta and United.
American could, on its own, do more now (or at any time in the past few years). They learned with their mechanics that this makes it harder to reach a new contract. Giving out raises without getting a contract done means there’s less to give in the contract, so employees have less reason to agree to one. Mechanics didn’t wind up striking, they wound up engaging in an illegal work action that crippled the carrier in summer 2019.
With Southwest flight attendants getting a record-breaking contract and non-union Delta then handing out unilateral wages, American’s flight attendants will get a better contract. In some sense, the longer senior flight attendants wait the better off they become (especially if, like Southwest crew, they receive make-good payments for the time it took to get to a deal). Junior flight attendants though suffer from much lower wages, having to live closer to hand to mouth, the longer they wait. The incentives of junior crew are very different than more senior flight attendants.
