As flight attendants at Delta Air Lines enjoy another annual raise and the most generous profit sharing in the airline industry, flight attendants at United Airlines find themselves in a holding pattern, working without a raise since 2019. But is a new deal finally around the corner?

United Flight Attendants Continue To Wait For A Raise

Progress has been slow in negotiating a new contract for the more than 25,000 flight attendants at United Airlines. Both sides accuse the other of acting unreasonably.

We have not heard much lately about progress being made, with both sides keeping quiet, at least publicly, about the specific points of disagreement that remain outstanding.

Commenting on rumors of a JetBlue-United partnership in a memo to flight attendants, the AFA appeared dismissive, but added, “It is important to stay focused on the facts and on our negotiations. We are headed into three straight weeks of negotiations and we will be pushing hard to reach an agreement flight attendants can ratify.”

A new contract is inevitable for flight attendants–even CEO Scott Kirby has repeatedly promised an “industry-leading” contract, but the two sides appear far apart, perhaps even more so in an era in which United has now issued a bifurcated earnings estimate with genuine fears of a recession amidst economic and political uncertainty.

A Plea For Sara Nelson

Sara Nelson, often called the world’s most powerful flight attendant, is a figurehead for the entire Association of Flight Attendants, but she’s also still a United flight attendant herself (though I’m not sure she is an active one).

Rather than exerting all her full energy in helping flight attendants at United secure a new contract (especially as the economy contracts), she is worried about a private club in Washington, DC:

Workers at London Heathrow Airport:

Attacking Scott Galloway for saying that we need to directly confront the federal budget deficit and national debt:

A wage floor for Nike workers in Asia:

I could go on (without cherry-picking her tweets), but you get the idea.

All important issues, but not a single tweet recently on the plight of United flight attendants. She’s lost the trees in the forest of organized labor…and those trees are struggling. I sense no urgency.

Of course, one can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I find the optics exactly the kind of off-putting ideological rhetoric that helped deliver the 2024 election to President Trump.

I’m not trying to make a political statement as much as present an observation that these sort of partisan tweets undermine what should be her primary goal: a pragmatic but generous new contract for United flight attendants that left, right, and center can rally around (and yes, even flight attendants at United have a wide variety of politcal views and the Trump-dominated mediation board does not need more reasons to side with the company over its workers).

CONCLUSION

As United and the AFA-CWA sit down for further negotiations, it would be nice if Sara Nelson put as much energy into a new contract as she seems to do for her other pet projects. My point is not to demean Nelson, but to remind her that all the energy she has directed to other causes comes at a price, for time is limited and precious currency. Maybe if she put a little more effort into finalizing a contract, that contract would be signed.

But as each day that goes by and economic conditions worsen, the prospects of an industry-leading (versus industry-matching) contract diminish.

Flight attendants at United–especially junior ones–deserve better.

image: AFA-CWA / YouTube