Collective bargaining at AA

For the first time in the carrier’s history, passenger service agents working at American Airlines have backed union representation for collective bargaining. The vote will affect about 14,500 agents who work at both American and US Airways. These workers will be represented jointly by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represented agents at US Airways for more than a decade before its merger with American in 2013. The CWA said that in all, 9,640 agents voted for the union while another 1,547 opposed it.

The National Mediation Board has also ruled that the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots at American Airlines, will bargain on behalf of US Airways’ pilots in future contract negotiations, according to a spokesperson.

Federal grant for de-icing facility

The US Department of Transportation is making available over US$7.2m for a project that will see the construction of a de-icing containment facility at Gerald R Ford International.

There have been worries over the quality of water adjacent to the airport and further afield, where pollutants from the de-icing process have been detected. The new facility will be treating the diluted fluids after the de-icing operation, removing heavy metals and other contaminants, before allowing a discharge of the cleansed water to the nearby river system.

Airport administrators have said that the facility should be fully functional by October 2015.

Swallowing the tablet

American Airlines has won approval for the swapping of flight attendants’ paper manuals for electronic tablets, in a change that ought to bring with it savings totaling nearly USD$1m a year.

The move, which does not yet affect attendants at its subsidiary, US Airways, comes a year after American Airline’s cockpits abandoned paper. This is just one of various strategies that airlines have rolled out in an effort to reduce weight and save on fuel.

Already, Delta and United have distributed smart devices to their pilots, while next month Delta has plans to roll out an electronic manual for its flight attendants.

More minimum wage demands

Seattle started it. Next, Los Angeles jumped on the bandwagon. Now, a group of workers at Minneapolis-St Paul International are pinning their hopes on an hourly minimum wage of US$15. In all, over 800 staff have signed a petition asking the Metropolitan Airports Commission for an increase in salary.

The initiative becomes the latest in a nationwide effort to boost wages for the lowest-wage earners. However, earlier in the year, the Minnesota Legislature raised the minimum wage from US$6.15 an hour for large employers to US$8. By 2016, it will be US$9.50, thereafter indexed to inflation, which will start in 2018.

Needless to say, worker groups there have been flagging up the above two stations as examples of success in this wage demand.

Whether they will be as lucky as their colleagues remains to be seen: officials at Minneapolis have said that the only salaries it might be able to enhance at the airport would be those of its own employees, all of whom earn more than US$15 an hour anyhow. It would require the intervention of the state Legislature to change wages for the remainder of the workers.

In Brief

American Airlines has set October 20 as the date that American and US Airways will become one cargo organization. This transition comes ten months after the merger between the two airlines became official.