More than two years into extended contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines management and the Association of Flight Attendants, the leadership of the Alaska unit of the union decided Friday to put a new agreement to a vote of its members next month.
Last August, a two-thirds majority of the rank-and-file flight attendants rejected a previous tentative agreement as not sufficiently addressing the very low pay of the newer flight attendants.
Many junior Alaska Airlines flight attendants have struggled to get by on poverty-level wages, building up debt and scrambling to make rent.
The terms of the new offer were disseminated to union members late Friday. Base pay rates are unchanged from the proposal rejected in August except for small increases to those with more than 13 years of service.
However, the proposal bumps up slightly the amount of “boarding pay” from the first tentative agreement, which is of more benefit to junior flight attendants who fly shorter routes and board and deboard often. Currently flight attendants are not paid for their time when passengers are boarding, even as they greet passengers, make sure meals are set and do preflight safety checks.
Online voting on the proposal will open Feb. 11 and close Feb. 28.
This time, even if flight attendants are disappointed by the incremental improvements offered since August, they will almost certainly vote to accept it.
That’s because this is a final chance to nail down whatever gains are possible before fresh bargaining begins in April for a new merged contract covering both the 7,000 Alaska Airlines and the 2,200 Hawaiian Airlines flight attendants.
If the Alaska flight attendants accept this new offer, its compensation terms will serve as a floor for those in the combined contract. In that later joint contract bargaining, which is likely to be complex and could again be protracted, they would then hope to win further pay increases.
Taylor Garland, spokesperson for the national AFA union, said the new tentative agreement “addresses issues identified by members, puts in place significant economic gains, and provides the foundation we need for a second bite of the apple in this merger.”
Christina Frees, a 13-year, Seattle-based flight attendant, said the agreement will likely be approved even though she said at first look it seems “not an overall improvement at all.”
“They put us in-between a rock and a hard place. I do believe it’s likely to be ratified because the cost of living is high and the pay is so bad,” Frees said. “We have to get the increase in pay, otherwise we sit for another two to three years waiting for a merger contract.”
Thresia Raynor, a 17-year flight attendant based in Anchorage and a candidate in this month’s election of a leader for the combined Alaska-Hawaiian union, said union members “are all fully aware of the consequences of turning it down this time.”
“It’s the only deal we are going to get, with the hope of more gains later in the joint collective bargaining agreement” with the Hawaiian flight attendants, Raynor said.
“And the company is in an incredible position of profitability,” she added, referencing what Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci in an earnings call Thursday called the airline’s “outstanding financial performance” with a net profit of $395 million in 2024.
On that call, Minicucci said he “couldn’t be happier that we reached an agreement in concept” with the flight attendants union, and added that he looks forward to the next step: the joint collective bargaining process as the merger with Hawaiian takes shape.
Separately, on Wednesday the union’s Alaska Airlines unit will select a new president, vice president and secretary-treasurer, a trio that will lead the union through the merging of the Alaska and Hawaiian flight-attendant groups.
Union bylaws lay out a strangely undemocratic process: Those three union officers will not be chosen through a vote of all the flight attendants but by an election among just eight people.
Those are the presidents of the local union councils at six Alaska bases and two Hawaiian bases. Two of the eight are seeking election and will be in a position to vote for themselves.
The union says this process ensures smaller bases, such as San Diego, have as much say as larger ones, such as Seattle.
But Raynor, who is running for president, and Frees, among others, perceive it as a system that ensures a small, tight-knit clique gets to run the union.
At the union board of directors convention in Atlanta last May, a proposal to change the bylaws so that union leaders would be elected by a vote of all their members was put forward. But in a vote among the small groups of union officers from each airline who currently hold that power to elect the leaders, it was rejected.
“It isn’t a fair process, and I don’t think it bodes well for proper representation of our group,” Frees said.
