The following is a message about Bridge The Gap, an AFA campaign to help bring equal treatment by management to all Flight Attendants across the industry. Bridge the Gap is a campaign for all Flight Attendants, working to improve pay and working conditions across the entire industry. For more information, follow #BridgeTheGap on Twitter or visit http://www.afacwa.org/bridge_the_gap.
Note from your Master Executive Council (MEC): AFA Alaska supports equal pay, benefits and working conditions for Flight Attendants at our sister carrier Horizon Air—as well as for all regional Flight Attendants throughout the industry. As a point of clarification, Alaska Air Group has never declared bankruptcy nor has been required to restructure or reorganize like most other mainline carriers have in the past decade or so.
Wherever any Flight Attendant is discriminated against, it affects our entire profession. We all want higher pay, better re
st and work rules, affordable health care and a reasonable retirement.
Mainline management throughout the industry, who slashed pay and benefits through bankruptcy, are now using their post-merger consolidation to pit workers against each other.
Management throughout the industry has transferred routes to regional airlines and with it Flight Attendant jobs move to a structure with 45% less pay and benefits where we serve the same passengers paying the same ticket price to travel those routes.
And, there’s so much more than wages at stake, such as fighting fatigue. We all need adequate work rules to perform as aviation’s first responders.
Discrimination only exists if we fail to act when we think it doesn’t affect us individually. We must work together in solidarity to support each other and end discrimination that will undercut our careers. Equal pay for equal work – we will all do better together.
In Solidarity,
Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Becky Strachan, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow and Stephen Couckuyt
