Turns Out Flight Attendants Do a Ton of Unpaid Work
On average, flight attendants work 35 hours per month for free, according to a new campaign.
The next time a flight attendant is checking your ticket during boarding, you should know that they're technically doing that for free. And what about pre-flight safety checks? Also unpaid work—and the same goes to deplaning, customs, and hundreds of other duties.
On average, flight attendants work 35 hours per month of unpaid work, but unions are trying to make some much-needed changes. The union representing 18,500 flight attendants in Canada, named the Airline Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), just launched a new series, which is part of its campaign dubbed Airline Division's Unpaid Work Won't Fly. As a whole, the campaign sees the joint effort of 10 airline groups fighting against the unfairness of unpaid work across the airline sector.
The series, called "12 Days of Unpaid Work," was just launched ahead of the busy holiday travel season, and it zooms into all the ways flight attendants are forced to work unpaid across several major airlines. Among them, flight attendants are not paid when a flight is delayed due to mechanical issues or weather, or when boarding is delayed.
"All we want for Christmas this year is pay for time worked," said Wesley Lesosky, president of CUPE, in a statement. "Airline executives across Canada need to know that forcing overworked flight attendants to work unpaid for almost a full work-week every month is a one-way ticket to the naughty list."
For more information on the campaign, you can visit this website, and you can view the series right here.
While the campaign is specific to the Canadian flight attendant union, similar issues have been raised by American flight attendants in recent months. According to The Guardian, unions representing flight attendants at Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, and American Airlines have pushed for additional pay to reflect the amount of unpaid work they are forced to carry out, among other changes to their working conditions.