Mark Gruenberg at People’s World reports on the American Airlines Flight Attendants Union: Imagine moving back in with your Mother, at age 31, because you can’t afford to rent your New York City apartment.  Your pay is too low, even with a second (or third) job.  You now face a two-hour one-way commute to work at New York’s airports on Long Island’s expressways.  There is an alternative to that drive, though.  “We have many Flight Attendants who live out of their cars,” says Washington, D.C.-area resident and Flight Attendant Diane Britton.  Or imagine being forced to buy toxic uniforms and wear them to work?  The uniforms made you break out in rashes, Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) Member Alex Roberts explained. When you switched to regular clothes to drive to your job at Washington National Airport, changing to those uniforms when you arrived, you got written up.  Not only that, but you had to shell out $1,300 in cash for those toxic togs.  For a rookie like D.C.-area resident Youdline Joseph, that’s one of every $21 of your gross annual pay.  A lawsuit led to new non-toxic uniforms two years ago, before Joseph joined American Airlines - but she had to pay for those new uniforms, too - same price - before choosing between car payments and auto insurance, and while turning to family, friends, and notoriously rapacious payday lenders for help.  Welcome to the not-so-wonderful world of the 27,000 Flight Attendants of American Airlines.  They haven’t had a new contract, or a raise, since 2019, before the Coronavirus Pandemic hit.  They’re hurting big time and it led them to picket in front of Democratic President Joe Biden’s White House on May 9th, demanding his Federal Board grant them the right to Strike.  While Joseph, Roberts, Britton and other Attendants interviewed struggle along, American raked in $53 billion last year and its CEO took home $31 million.  The Flight Attendants’ annual starting pay is $27,000 - and that’s before taxes.  No wonder Picketers carried “Corporate Greed Doesn’t Fly” signs.

To Read This Labor News Report In Its Entirety, Go To: American Airlines flight attendants to Biden: Set us free to strike – People's World (peoplesworld.org)