Workers at the company's American Eagle subsidiary want more momentum in labor negotiations
A group of American Airlines (AAL) flight attendants are calling a strike authorization vote. The workers are employed by PSA Airlines, a regional carrier that’s part of American’s American Eagle network. Represented by the Association of Flight Attendants, they say a wage proposal given to them by the company doesn’t match what they’re seeing at larger airlines and leaves many of them struggling to pay bills.
“Flight Attendants at PSA and other regional airlines across the industry are fighting to end tiers in aviation,” said AFA president Sara Nelson in a statement accompanying the announcement. “PSA Flight Attendants wear the same uniforms, fly the same routes, and perform the same service as mainline Flight Attendants. But airlines leave them behind in compensation and benefits.”
American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The balloting for a strike authorization vote will wrap up next month, though flight attendant strike votes tend to be near-unanimous. Because flight attendant labor contracts are governed by the Railway Labor Act instead of the National Labor Relations Act, they are much more constrained in what kinds of labor actions they can take. A successful vote would not immediately result in a strike, but an affirmative tally would free them to pursue a strike if government minders for the talk deem that an impasse has been reached.
American Airlines does not break out in its annual report the money it makes from its American Eagle lines. The company technically purchases the “capacity” from those airlines, controls the marketing, and takes all the fares they generate while lumping them in its general “passenger revenue” reporting line. When she spoke with Quartz last month, the AFA’s Nelson said that one of the difficulties facing airline unions is negotiating for the smaller carriers that are attached to brand-name parent companies but lack the brand-name treatment at the bargaining table.
“We have to tackle the business model of having this contracted-out work where the major airlines are saying it’s not their decision,” she said. “We have to negotiate with these regional carriers even though we know that it’s truly the decision of the mainline carriers who are setting those rates and demanding those low labor costs in order to contract this work with the regional airlines.”
A work stoppage by the PSA flight attendants would not be the first time that American has dealt with a strike threat this summer. For months, flight attendants at the company’s main division (represented by a different union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants) sought to be released from federally mandated and mediated bargaining sessions in order to improve the offers they were getting from the other side of the table. They eventually got a deal without having to walk off the job.
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