FORT WORTH- Modern air travel often feels terrible with cramped seats and tiny luggage compartments. However, passengers in those cramped seats generally fare better than the flight attendants.
On American Airlines (AA) flights, attendants earn just over US$27,000 per year while having to live in expensive major metro areas, leading many to sleep in their cars to manage costs.
American Flight Attendants Low Pay
Fortune spoke with representatives from the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), the union negotiating salaries with American Airlines and preparing for a potential strike if wages don’t rise sufficiently. The union feels they have little left to lose.
According to APFA president Julie Hedrick, negotiations have been ongoing intermittently since the previous contract expired in 2019.
American Airlines has proposed a 17% wage increase, raising the starting salary to $31,959 per year, or $35.5 per flight hour. This rate would place junior flight attendants who live alone above the food stamp qualification threshold in states like Massachusetts and Florida.
However, most new flight attendants are required to live in high-cost cities such as Dallas, Miami, and New York, which they cannot afford. Hedrick noted that some American Airlines flight attendants are forced to sleep in their cars and compete for trips just to eat plane meals if the pilots don’t take them first.
“Our new hire flight attendants are struggling,” Hedrick said, adding that new hires have overwhelmingly rejected the proposed 17% increase.
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Strike, ‘Not An Option’
American Airlines has previously given new flight attendants a “courtesy” letter, akin to a doctor’s note for late-stage capitalism. The letter states that flight attendants only earn $27,315 and asks the reader to extend courtesy where possible. Dealing with landlords, one can imagine how effective this piece of paper is in place of rent.
The best hope for American Airlines flight attendants may lie in a strike, but that option is uncertain. The Biden administration has shown a tendency to impose contracts on workers to maintain commerce, a genuine risk to the union’s plans as noted by Fortune.
Railway and airline workers cannot strike without approval from federal mediators under the 1926 Railway Labor Act. The National Mediation Board, overseeing the American Airlines negotiations, can allow a strike if it finds an impasse. However, the federal government can also block a strike, as it did in December 2022 when President Joe Biden signed a measure imposing a contract between rail companies and workers that many had rejected.
The power to strike is crucial for American Airlines workers but hinges on government action—a government that often sides with corporations in disputes. This could be a factor in why salaries remain so low.
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