American Airlines is reportedly issuing so-called ‘poverty verification letters’ for some new-hire flight attendants based in the most expensive metro areas in the United States, urging the recipients to help out the flight attendant because they are only set to warn little more than $27,000 per year before tax. The leaked letter is being provided…
How is being paid “from pushback to arrival” even vaguely legal?
When you have money you get to write the laws.
Remember when a letter from an airline exec was all it took for the cdc to reduce COVID sick leave? PFR…
The Golden Rule: Those that have the gold make the rules.
Even fast food restaraunts in airports pay a higher hourly rate to compensate the staff for the added pain in the balls for getting to work.
they’re salaried? only thing I can come up with.
If they’re infact hourly… then work is work, and they’re working off the clock.
They’re hourly. I still can’t believe this is legal.
Edit: found an article on it. Spoiler: it’s legal because the government makes all sorts of exceptions for airlines. Their unions even have to get government permission to strike!
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/12/flight-attendants-don-t-earn-their-hourly-pay-until-aircraft-doors-close-here-s-why/
Thank you Railway Labor Act of 1926. It’s actually not all bad, but it does put railway and airline workers in a different class. It all depends on how the National Mediation Board is feeling that day.
Been that way forever. Parking brake release with door closed was the standard for a long time. Now they have parking systems on the terminal that sense the aircraft and don’t start the clock until the aircraft pushes back, and stop the clock as soon as it’s parked even if you’re sitting there for 30 minutes waiting for the jet bridge or whatever.
Yeah but they also used to have a good enough pay that it was still an okay deal, even if the clock only ran during aircraft movement. It’s still the case with other airlines I have an old friend that went to work for Etihad and he seems to be doing fine. Tells me about the nice weekends away all over the world during rest time, lives in a nice apartment in Dubai with a view, etc. Granted I’d never want to live there but I’m sure you can achieve similar lifestyle with other international airlines (Singapore, KLM, etc etc).
Sure, back before deregulation. But the pay today for new cabin crew is not what you think it is, and it takes quite a few years before you can keep your head above water. Some other national carriers like Etihad are going to be different, but they have a lot of other rules to put up with for that extra pay.
Oh for sure at the end of the day it’s still massive corporate industries so, ya know, corporate gonna corporate… Long gone are the days where it was a dream career.