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United Airlines held an event in Brooklyn on Wednesday to unveil its latest Polaris® Business Class seats. The seats and amenities look impressive, but a group of around 12 United flight attendants were not in the mood to party. They crashed the event and took to the stage to protest with signs and chants calling out the fact that they have gone around four years with a contract. The flight attendants have been reportedly suspended for their actions, but the union representing them and the President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA says that this is unjust as it was protected activity.
Sara Nelson (President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA) is claiming that the actions were protected. It gets complicated with what airline employees are allowed to protest and when a strike can be called. When employees have protested in the past, it has generally been outside of airports. Storming a private event and trying to derail it does not seem like it would be protected and these actions are likely to make already high tensions boil as the union and United continue to work to reach an agreement on a contract for the flight attendants.
Aviation watchdog, @JonNYC, shared that the flight attendants have been removed from service. An ongoing investigation is not likely to bode well given the event was captured on video and reports from people onsite say that they were removed for trespassing. The Railway Labor Act is the federal statute that governs “collective bargaining, representation, and grievance processing.” It protects protests, but does not allow people to trespass, commit acts of violence, or cause a material disruption of a carrier’s operations. This happened at an invite-only event in a private space and seems pretty clear that it’s a violation.
I’m sure that this stunt was the last thing that United execs were thinking about before taking the stage.
Anthony’s Take: Do I think storming the stage was right? No. Do I think it’s well past time for the flight attendants to have a new contract? Absolutely. Let’s see if United can get this wrapped up with the union and hopefully these flight attendants are reprimanded but not terminated.
(Image Credits: @JonNYC via X and United Airlines.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
