United Airlines flight attendants rally at Orlando International Airport as union contract talks continue

As part of a national day of action at nearly 20 airports, flight attendants for United Airlines picketed outside Orlando International Airport Wednesday to ramp up the pressure for United to hammer out a new contract with their union.

Travelers waiting for their flights, United Airlines pilots (who are also union) and Transportation Security Administration agents (whose union the Trump administration is trying to eliminate) joined flight attendants on the picket line.

Flight attendants for United aren’t on strike — not yet. And according to Randy Hatfield, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA Council 22 representing nearly 800 flight attendants in Florida, they want to be able to avoid that outcome altogether.

“We’re not on strike, we’re not looking to strike — we just want our voices heard,” said Hatfield, who has 30 years of flight attendant experience under his belt.

“This is not a we-want-to-go-on-strike and we-want-to-disrupt-the-flying or anything. We love our passengers. We want them to come back. That’s how we earn a living,” he noted. “We just want our voices heard.”

United Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the world by revenue, secured “record” fourth-quarter profits last year, reporting $3.1 billion in profits in 2024 alone.

Yet according to the union, which also represents flight attendants at Frontier and other major airlines, United has failed to agree on certain proposals flight attendants have prioritized, including scheduling flexibility and pay during boarding, and has looked for concessions from the union on things like healthcare coverage.

“We’re looking at a company that’s at $1.5 billion in stock buybacks,” said Hatfield, referring to a stock buyback program announced by the Chicago-based airline last fall. “We’re the face of the company,” he asserted.

Both parties have been in talks for a new union contract since 2021, when their last union contract — since extended — expired. Flight attendants are currently being paid according to a wage scale last negotiated through their former contract in 2016.

Starting wages for United begin at $26.68 an hour and top off at $62 an hour for flight attendants of 13 years experience or more. Flight attendants under 13 years earn modest raises annually, but veterans with more years under their belt haven’t received a raise since 2019, according to Hatfield. But it’s junior attendants, who are limited to a set number of hours they’re allowed to work per month, who are struggling the most.

Still, one of the biggest priorities for flight attendants this contract cycle is getting paid for boarding time. “When a flight attendant shows up to the aircraft and they get on board, until the plane door closes, our flight attendant is not being paid,” Hatfield explained.

That means the time flight attendants spend on the aircraft while passengers are boarding, and the time they spend between flights at each airport, is unpaid — even if attendants are waiting in an airport for hours between scheduled flights.

“We’re looking at a company that’s at $1.5 billion in stock buybacks.”

“To get boarding pay in the contract is a must for the flight attendants,” Hatfield emphasized. “No one wants to come to work and work for free.”

Airlines like Southwest and American have already agreed to boarding pay in their own agreements negotiated by the Transport Workers Union and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, respectively. Delta, which has fought off unionization efforts among their flight attendants for decades, was the first major airline to begin offering boarding pay in 2022.

According to Hatfield, United has also asked for concessions on healthcare coverage and flight attendants’ current flexibility in determining which flights they’re willing to work.

He said United has proposed a sort of “bidding system” for flight attendants that would jeopardize the freedoms they’ve long enjoyed as part of the job. “It would virtually have them in control of how we live our lives and when we report to work, when we don’t,” he explained.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Both United and Hatfield say they’ve made progress on certain proposals during contract talks. And United has agreed to pull certain concessions they previously tried to push upon union members.

“We’re having productive negotiations with the AFA, including last week, and we continue to find common ground,” a United spokesperson told Orlando Weekly in a statement. “We’re eager to reach the industry-leading contract our flight attendants deserve.”

The stakes if an agreement isn’t reached could be high. Last fall, flight attendants announced an overwhelming 99.9 percent vote to authorize a strike, if necessary — with roughly 90 percent of eligible members participating in a vote.

A strike authorization vote doesn’t mean a strike will necessarily occur, but it does mean that flight attendants are prepared to strike — and leverage that collective withholding of their labor — if it’s deemed necessary to achieve their demands.

Under the National Railway Act, governing labor relations in the rail and airline industries, the union would have to request a 30-day “cooling off” period from the National Mediation Board before any such strike could occur. So far, the union has not taken that route, and Hatfield says that’s not the goal.

Both parties plan to meet back at the bargaining table in Chicago to continue contract talks in early April.

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This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.