An employment verification letter from American Airlines has been circulating on Reddit and is drawing attention for the low starting salary for some newly hired flight attendants. The letter states that a new American Airlines flight attendant can expect to earn $27,315 per year before incentives and taxes, sparking discussion about fair wages for flight attendants and how rising inflationary prices are making life unaffordable for many Americans. . And the labor market looks good on paper.
The union representing American Airlines employees, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, confirmed the authenticity of the letter, CNN Report, this document is issued for potential landlords or other services where flight attendants need to verify their employment and income.
While the wages listed in the letter are above the federal poverty level of $15,060 for a single-person household, the number does not reflect the true cost of living nationwide, which can be much higher in major metropolitan areas.
Unions have also been calling for low starting wages, which for single-income families meet eligibility criteria for federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or food stamp benefits in several states, including Massachusetts and New York.
The union also called attention to the growing problem of “corporate greed” by comparing the wages of flight attendants with that of company chief executive Robert Isom.
New flight attendants’ starting salary is about $27,000 per year, a fraction of the $31.4 million the CEO earned last year, which is 1,162 times what new flight attendants earn.
American Airlines did not immediately respond of wealth Request to comment.
To be sure, there are a number of challenges facing the union representing American Airlines flight attendants and management. Under a federal law called the Railroad Labor Act, workers and union members in the airline and railroad industries are prohibited from going on strike without government permission. Federal mediation groups such as the National Mediation Council could grant such permission by declaring negotiations between American and union groups to be deadlocked or allowing the unions to stage a potential strike.
The last contract negotiated by the union was signed in 2014, and workers have not received a pay increase since 2019, according to the association’s November update.
“Flight attendants are frontline workers who are experiencing inflationary pressures without the compensation they need to keep pace with the industry,” the association wrote in a statement, adding that the quality of flight attendants’ lives “can be measured through New collective bargaining to improve”. protocol. ”
The union has recently been pushing for a new contract with higher hourly wages, and flight attendants at other airlines including United, Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines have made similar demands.
Ensuring that flight attendants are appropriately compensated is particularly important given that their work patterns include many hours of unpaid work. On average, full-time flight attendants only receive hourly pay for about 75 hours per month, and often don’t officially start getting paid until after the planes close, rather than for the hours they are required to work at the airport or on the plane. During the boarding process.
“One of the most stressful parts of flying is the boarding process, but we are not paid to do this work,” the union wrote in a May 20 summary.
Ensuring boarding fees “is an important step in addressing this historic inequality,” the union wrote; other airlines have also been making these changes, albeit slowly. In June 2022, Delta Air Lines instituted boarding pay for flight attendants after facing threats from a union movement, giving workers half their hourly rate during boarding. However, Delta is the only major U.S. airline whose flight attendants are not unionized.
The union is now proposing a 33% pay increase in the first year of the new contract, capped at $91 an hour, and increases of 5%, 4% and 4% in the remaining years of the four-year deal. It also calls for retroactive pay increases based on waiters’ workload during negotiations over the past five years.
American Airlines “refuses to abandon its top rate of $76 per hour, plus boarding fees and other improvements,” but the airline offered boarding fees, higher 401K matching contributions on the same basis, the union wrote in the brief. Benefits such as payment and profit sharing.
