Posts tagged airlines

    Los Angeles tourism industry and labor unions brawl ahead of 2028 Olympics

    July 1, 2025 // After the city council passed a $30 minimum wage law in late May for workers in the airline, hotel and hospitality industries, a group of business interests — signed by players in the local hospitality industry and funded by major airlines and industry groups like Delta, United and the American Hotel & Lodging Association — launched a referendum effort to challenge the new law. “We’re giving everything we have to make this business work, to claw out of the hole that was created by COVID,” said Greg Plummer, a referendum proponent who runs a 250-employee concession company at LAX. “Our airports are still down substantially in traffic. Tourism is completely down, and the fires didn’t help … it gets to a point where it’s going to crumble a lot of small businesses.”

    What would a general strike in the US actually look like?

    April 10, 2025 // But organized labor can plan for a general strike in the future that may not break the terms of their contracts. The UAW has called to align all union contract terminations for the same date in 2028 as a way to promote united action and perhaps even a general strike by circumventing the prohibition on striking during a union contract. That call has already promoted wider discussion of general strikes in labor and social movements. Of course, different unions striking at the same time does not guarantee a united front around issues of common concern: The first half of 1946 saw nearly 3 million workers simultaneously on strike, including auto, steel, coal, railroad and many other industries, but unions pursued separate demands, made little effort to pool their strength, and settled with little consideration of the impact on those remaining on strike.

    Sun Country Airlines, International Brotherhood of Teamsters reach agreement covering flight attendants

    January 31, 2025 // Both IBT and Sun Country will work together to finalize the language in the agreement. Once it is revised, flight attendants will be able to vote on it next month.

    Delta flight attendants remain without a union but advocates are hopeful for a future vote

    December 9, 2024 // Delta Air Lines is the only major U.S. airline without a union for its flight attendants. In the past, there have been three failed attempts by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union representing flight attendants, to organize this work group.

    Teamsters Memo Signals Rift Between Major Unions

    June 4, 2024 // In 2013, several years after the Teamsters left the AFL-CIO, the union tried to raid bargaining units at American Airlines and then-U.S. Airways, which later merged with American. The mechanics at U.S. Airways were represented by the IAM. At the time, the IAM accused the Teamsters of “dividing already unionized employees with hollow promises.” The Teamsters and the IAM later reached a peace. They even announced in 2022 that they would work together to organize a broad swath of workers at Delta alongside the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. The Teamsters were to represent the airline’s mechanics, the IAM Delta’s ramp and cargo workers, and the AFA Delta’s flight attendants.

    Ravn cuts workforce two years after pilots unionize

    February 27, 2024 // The airlines had declared bankruptcy in 2020, sold off some of its aircraft, and reorganized. Its parent company is FLOAT Alaska. Ravn is suffering from a labor shortage, competition, and inflation, it reported. But in 2022, its pilots joined a union — Airline Pilots Association. Two years later, their company is evidently struggling to stay alive.

    How More Than 200 Employees Have Been Forced Into a Union Only 8 of Them Voted For

    January 18, 2024 // The union filed an application for an election when the company was in its infancy and there were only 14 eligible voters. At the time of the election, there were nearly 100 flight attendants, but through a loophole in the law, only the original 14 were allowed to vote, and of them, eight voted for the union. Since then, the company has continued to grow. Now, Avelo Airlines’ 200-plus flight attendants are saddled up with a union voted in by eight people. Think of that: More than 200 people have been forced into an affiliation with an entity that only eight of them embraced.

    Did SkyWest fire two flight attendants for unionizing, or for posting colleagues’ personal data?

    September 28, 2023 // hane Price and Tresa Grange were already recognized leaders of an effort to organize with a union, outside of SkyWest’s flight attendant union, SkyWest Inflight Association (SIA), when Price said he “stumbled upon” the voting credentials of his fellow flight attendants. His colleagues’ personal information, including unique voting codes, was on an unprotected website for anybody to see if they knew where to look, he said. (On Monday, SIA’s website was down, listed as “under construction.”) “The website that SIA created had all of that information available to the public,” Price said. “It wasn’t even password-protected.”