140 Members Of Congress Want Delta Flight Attendants To Earn Less, Pay Union Dues – View from the Wing

140 Members Of Congress Want Delta Flight Attendants To Earn Less, Pay Union Dues

by Gary Leff on February 14, 2024

140 members of the House of Representatives have written to Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian telling him to stay out of union organizing efforts at the airline, and remain neutral. This is dumb.

• Union organizers, who stand to benefit from a successful campaign, are telling their story
• Delta must tell its story, so that employees can make a fully informed decision
• Why let one side propagandize employees? Only getting half the story is unfair to employees.

Delta Air Lines pays employees more than competitors. And Delta Air Lines did not furlough anyone during the pandemic. Union American Airlines and United furloughed roughly 35,000 flight attendants combined.

You’d think that unionization would be a tough sell, then, but most Delta employees are new since the last failed effort.

The union pitch is that

1. things may be better now at Delta than competitor airlines, but that’s not guaranteed in a contract, and
2. with collective bargaining things could be even better.

Ilhan Omar thinks flight attendants need to unionize to see a ‘fair share’ of profits. In other words, Ilhan Omar is an idiot.

Today, flight attendants from across the country are gathering at 30+ airports, including at MSP Airport, picketing for fair pay in response to continued corporate greed.

It is time our flight attendants see their fair share of the profits their work creates.

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) February 13, 2024

Non-union Delta pays more profit sharing than all other U.S. airlines combined. Omar’s tweet went out a day before Delta’s pre-announced profit sharing payments totaling $1.4 billion. That’s more than a month’s pay for non-union employees.

The payout marks an important milestone for Delta’s profit-sharing program, bringing the total paid out to employees since its inception in 2007 to $11 billion. Delta continues to lead the industry in profit sharing, with this year’s total greater than the pool of all U.S. peer airlines combined.

And Delta flight attendants are already the highest-paid in the industry, even apart from profit sharing. They have the highest hourly rates and they receive boarding pay, which no union flight attendants in the U.S. do today.

The best bargaining employees can do is to keep unionization as a stalking horse. As soon as they actually vote for it, the value of the threat goes away. The airline stops unilaterally raising pay year after year. They go into contract negotiations, and start saving money on pay while a contract gets negotiated. American Airlines flight attendants haven’t had a raise in five years.

The AFA-CWA, which is trying to organize flight attendants at Delta, reports that over 90% of their members are unhappy with their jobs at United. Delta employees seem to enjoy their jobs and to be proud of where they work. That makes a difference in the customer experience, which is part of why customers pay a premium to fly Delta and why Delta earns the profits that it shares with employees.

I wouldn’t want to be a flight attendant at American Airlines without a union (though the current flight attendants union there is highly dysfunctional). I wouldn’t want a union if I were a flight attendant at Delta. They’d probably be making less – waiting longer for raises, earning less from profit sharing – while paying dues for the privilege.

Members of Congress pushing for unionization at Delta don’t have the best interests of Delta employees in mind when demanding the airline step out of the way and let just one side message to them.

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