FA’s don’t really get paid a “higher hourly rate”. In the US it’s been a sticking point for decades, especially at smaller airlines, that FA’s qualify pretty easily for food stamps or other public assistance. Also, what isn’t mentioned is that “door closed” doesn’t mean you get paid. The airlines have installed various systems that track when the aircraft actually pushes back and made that the start of the pay clock and not the closing of the door, so everyone can sit at the gate, closed up and ready to go, and not get paid while waiting out a gate hold for whatever reason. There’s lots of little gotchas the airlines make up to not get paid. Pilots IMO are mostly finally getting paid decently after decades of poor pay (again, especially at smaller airlines) but FA’s have been on instant top ramen wages for a long, long time even after years of working for a company.
How are they not starting to get paid when they get to “work” (the airport) and do all the things prior to even passengers getting on board?
That’s the management excuse of saying essentially that “we pay them enough to cover the time they are on duty.”
I calculated my “on duty” pay as a pilot for a smaller airline and it was ~$16/hr vs my stated hourly flight (door closed) pay.
For an experiment: Make a pilot rate $50/hr which sounds ok, but a 4 day trip is only 17 hours door closed time which pays $850 before taxes/medical, but the pilot is physically at the airport or on the plane for 37 hours over those 4 days which would be $22/duty hour. Now do the same for a flight attendant earning $21/hr. ~$350 for a 4 day trip, $9.45/duty hour.
So you can see pretty quickly why FA’s are fighting for better pay while on duty.
A big reason why so many flight attendant union protests point out that they can’t even afford to live in the cities the airlines base them to fly from.
There is “per-diem” pay which is supposed to help cover things like food and incidentals while on duty, but it is usually a pittance, $2-4 a duty hour. One $15 airport meal and a $25 dinner on the overnight would wipe out a day’s per-diem and then some, and a reason many crews bring their own food and snacks.
Is this the same all around the world? I can’t fathom this would be ok from a workers rights perspective in Europe. But thanks for the insight!
No, some places better, but some places are also worse too. Flight attendants almost universally are treated more poorly.
It doesn’t sound like the values that most Canadians have but it sure sounds like the values that most corporations have.
I really hope they give in to the very reasonable demands of being paid while at work and get this fixed by Friday because I fly out Saturday on WestJet.
Looks like today (Monday) they came to a tentative agreement and have cancelled all pickets and work stoppages.
All without the government having to intercede on the companies side.
A labour friendly government would outlaw the practice so unions wouldn’t have to waste money and effort fighting this obviously unacceptable bullshit. Wish we had one!
It’s ridiculous that the government didn’t get to work on fixing this last year after Air Canada’s flight attendants went on strike over the same thing.
Wait, why didn’t they strike simultaneously?
Air Canada’s flight attendants union went on strike last summer when contract negotiations weren’t working, and West Jet’s flight attendants union didn’t start contract negotiations until later in the year.
If they did, the government would step in and decide for all parties what the terms of the contracts will be.
A lot of bad things would happen if there were zero airlines in operation. Just as collusion between companies is bad, collusion between unions is bad. There’s a difference between taking action that negatively impacts a company and taking action that negatively impacts a whole country. So the government would need to be directly involved.
And how is that different from forced labor/ slavery
Holy failed hyperbole batman.
The flight attendants can quit their jobs FFS.
