United AFA Flight Attendants,
The United Master Executive Council held an emergency meeting last week with AFA International President Sara Nelson and AFA Legal. We have never seen such a chaotic, ill-equipped, and entirely unsustainable operation.
Last summer, AFA pressed United management for solutions and engaged in discussions to automate notifications to Flight Attendants in order to facilitate reassignments and recovery according to our Contract. The only solution management offered was the concession of adding time (2 hours, for a total of 6 hours) to the reassignment window - which has nothing to do with the automation of notification. When a flight cancels, United is able to notify passengers immediately. There is no reason they can’t do the same with crews in order to facilitate efficiency and order. Those same passengers suffer when crews have to wait for reassignment or rest. United management has had a year to fix this and hire more schedulers (currently they have less schedulers than Spirit Airlines - an operation one fifth the size of United!).
They’ve done nothing but hire more Flight Attendants, who on a new hire salary and while learning to work our jobs have been put in the position of “self help” without money or resources to do this, or even clarity about their rights. Management’s response is threats, to place blame on Flight Attendants, and blame on our Union for rightfully refusing to accept a concession to fix the problems they’ve created. We even have reports of threats against schedulers who know they shouldn’t make reassignments that violate our Contract. Inflight management has lost control, lost our ‘shared purpose,’ and lost our confidence.