The new American Airlines flight attendants contract that workers will be asked to vote on contains new language about the union helping the airline track down and discipline members who sell their seniority.
Flight attendants get to ‘bid’ on trips based on seniority, choosing their schedules which are most convenient to them and which take them to the best destinations. That’s a perk that has real value. Want to fly to Rome? You’d better be super-senior… or be willing to pay someone who is to trade their trip with you.
Cracking down on this is now in the tentative agreement that the union negotiated.In fact it’s actually pretty obvious when this is happening when ultra junior cabin crew get to regularly pick up “Tel Aviv, Delhi, London Heathrow” and South America. But the union is effectively throwing these members under the bus. And that’s now in the tentative agreement that, if members vote yes, will become the contract.
The union hasn’t taken the traditional position that their members own their schedules and can do what they want with them. Interestingly, union reps themselves not only get more pay (115 hours of trip removal) than mere flight attendants but they can still pick up extra flying – which they can drop and give to friends through trip trades.This isn’t the first time that the flight attendants union has been weak in defending members against discipline by the company. They went along with, and even encouraged, the return of ‘attendance points’ for using earned sick days which was a practice that was suspended during the pandemic.
Flight attendants calling out sick cause senior members of the union to have to work reserve, so helping the company discourage calling out sick benefits her members who prefer more fixed schedules.Ultimately with assigning schedules based on seniority, employees are getting something of value – which may be valued more by someone else. Naturally a secondary market develops, and both parties benefit from the exchange.
The problems stem from inefficiently allocating what employees want most based on seniority, and then cowing to the envy of less senior flight attendants who feel like they’re being skipped over. But the company and union are fighting the symptoms of a broken duty assignment system which seems the least good approach here.