Someone I know is a flight attendant. It’s a flooded labor pool. I guess women see a classy looking airline operation and assume those people must be paid well. They don’t find out about the bad pay structure and long hours until they start working.
The biggest problem my friend told me about is that they are only on the clock from the time the flight boards to the time it lands and everyone disembarks. The hours they spend getting there early, getting through security, preparing the plane, and waiting for boarding time are all off the clock.
The worst schedule is doing shorter flights. You could spend a 12 hour day doing four flights and only get paid for 6 or 7 hours of flight time.
These Air Canada flight attendants have unionized to fight it, but the smart move is to avoid that line of work. The whole industry is probably stressful.
There is zero chance I would work under those conditions. While I do have problems with unions in general, this is a good use case for them.
(post is archived)