United Airlines is requiring flight attendants to give them at least 8 hours’ notice that they’re sick, or else risk discipline (including termination). Their union just lost a grievance against this policy, so it continues.
- Failure to notify the airline at least 8 hours prior to a flight means accumulating ‘attendance points’
- Too many points within a 12-month period can lead to disciplinary measures, including being fired.
- And flight attendants were receiving warnings for using sick time without giving the airline sufficient advance notice.
The union, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) argued that this “double dip” method unfairly penalizes employees by allowing the airline to impose multiple forms of discipline for the same infraction.
Arbitrators unanimously upheld the right of United Airlines to implement both attendance points and performance warnings for short-notice sick calls.
The eight hour rule is in the contract. The airline can waive the requirement for ‘genuine emergencies’ and flight attendants may be required to provide supporting evidence to substantiate their claims.
There’s a point at which you realize that you’re sick. Sometimes you put off that recognition thinking you might be tired or just have allergies.
A requirement to call out farther in advance seems like it would lead to greater absenteeism, since employees have to declare themselves sick just in case they’re sick.
But they won’t necessarily feel sick until close to departure, or even while they’re on a trip. It’s not plausible to get a doctors note at that point.
United’s Christmas dinner for employees was linked to food poisoning which reportedly came on fast.
Over the summer, United Airlines unilaterally imposed new conditions on sick time that flight attendants had earned. In order to use sick time, cabin crew who called in sick on a Friday through Sunday had to submit an Absence Certificate completed by a doctor.
This wasn’t just a doctor’s note. It detailed the employee’s treatment plan and their medical progress.
- This was meant to reduce employees calling out sick. United says there’s been an uptick in sick calls over weekends this summer.
- It appeared to violate the flight attendant contract, and potentially even some laws.
- However, even if blatantly impermissible, it still scared some flight attendants out of calling in sick during peak summer travel. That means fewer fake sick calls, and more crew who are sick showing up to work (infecting colleagues and passengers.
Flight attendants who wouldn’t share personal medical information with the airline but didn’t work sick were threatened with termination.
Demanding this information unless “particulars of treatment…are job-related and necessary for the conduct of business” has been deemed illegal and resulted in substantial fines in the past.
California-based flight attendants had even stronger state-level claims. The Department of Labor confirmed it was investigating. And United rescinded the policy after August.
United Airlines is hardly alone in approaches like this. Outside of Delta, major U.S. airlines have union contracts with their flight attendants. Those contracts include negotiated sick time.
But these airlines still punish flight attendants for calling in sick, encouraging them to work unwell and spread illness to other crew and to passengers.
Coming out of Covid, American Airlines brought back its points system, where flight attendants calling out sick racked up points that could subject them to discipline and even termination.
According to court testimony in Massachusetts, this was done with the approval and encouragement of the flight attendants union, because reduced absenteeism reduces the need for more senior flight attendants to work reserve.
However, United is the major carrier that still has a years-long negotiation in progress on a new flight attendant contract. Cabin crew at United are still being paid wages negotiated prior to pandemic-era inflation, so the purchasing power of their pay has been eaten away.
Punitive action by the company now helps militarize them for a strike, even though a contract isn’t likely to change the situation and competitors with more recent contracts behave similarly.
Union organizers at Delta tell flight attendants there that this is the sort of behavior they’re at risk of without a union when, in fact, it’s how union-represented cabin crew are treated.
