Summary

  • Alaska Airlines flight attendants secure record-breaking contract with 32% average pay raise over three years.
  • New contract includes boarding pay, retro pay, and reassignment pay for schedule integrity issues.
  • The deal puts pressure on other airlines in negotiations, including United and American Airlines.

Flight attendants at Alaska Airlines have agreed to a new contract that is record-breaking in the United States. Though the agreement was reached a few weeks ago, the terms of the deal were revealed yesterday.

Industry-leading contract

Like any labor negotiations in the airline industry, Alaska Airlines’ flight attendants had been in talks with the airline for a long time. In February, the flight attendants even voted to authorize a strike. The strike never took place, and late last month, flight attendants reached a new tentative agreement with their employer.

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Photo: Alaska Airlines

On June 21, the union said it had reached a record tentative labor deal. The deal, a three-year contract, was agreed to during federal mediation, but details of the contract were not made public at the time. Now, the deal has been made public.

According to a report from Forbes, the new deal has four crucial elements:

  1. Average pay raises of 32% (over three years)
  2. Boarding pay
  3. Retro pay
  4. Reassignment pay when management fails to maintain schedule integrity

Sara Nelson, president of the union, said that Alaska’s flight attendants will receive a higher boarding pay rate than Delta Air Lines offered to its crew. Depending on the length of the trip and number of flights, boarding pay could add between 5% to 34%. If crew scheduling changes a flight attendant’s schedule in the middle of a trip, they will be paid 150%.

According to Nelson, the strike authorization vote placed a lot of pressure on Alaska.

“The credible strike threat and the leverage around the merger pushed them higher.”

Nelson added that this is the first time Alaska is leading the industry with a contract.

“It helps to raise the standard and makes it very hard for these other carriers to say they should pay less, when in fact they should pay more.”

Though the new contract is industry-leading in some aspects, the hourly pay is not the highest. Pay will rise 18% immediately and then 3% each of the following two years, which may or may not even keep up with inflation.

Earlier this year, Southwest Airlines agreed to an industry-leading deal with its flight attendants and that contract pays more per hour. Alaska Airlines flight attendants would earn more in total because of boarding pay. The voting period for the new contract is between July 24 and August 14.

Pressing other airlines to finish negotiations

Now that Alaska Airlines has reached a new deal with its flight attendants, even more pressure is placed on the other airlines currently in negotiations. United Airlines and American Airlines are in negotiations, but things at American are not going very well. Talks broke down a few weeks ago and flight attendants began to prepare for a strike.

Related

American Airlines Flight Attendant Contract Talks Break Down Without Agreement

If approved by the National Mediation Board, American Airlines flight attendants will be able to strike after a 30-day cooling-off period.

Since then, American said that progress has been made and that it has had an industry-leading proposal on the table for months.

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