Steward’s Corner: How AA Flight Attendants Scored a Huge Strike Vote
Flight Attendants at American Airlines voted to strike by 99.47 percent at the end of August, with 93 percent turnout.
The 26,000-member union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, has been in negotiations since 2019—and members have seen no raises since then. Understaffing and scheduling are also big issues. American, based in Dallas, is the largest airline in the world by passengers carried.
Slingshot: ‘Work Requirements’ or Real Jobs?
When I heard the debt-ceiling deal would target people in their fifties for new work requirements to get food stamps, I thought about my brother.
As a young man in the Navy, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes—that’s the one where your body attacks your pancreas, and you need insulin to stay alive. At the time, treatment options were limited, and the Navy discharged him. But thanks to the V.A. and medical advances, he was OK.
Beware the Time Thieves
French workers have shut the country down with general strikes three times in the last month to defend their time.
They’re protesting a proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
It’s enough to make you cry. Here, the Social Security retirement age was ratcheted up to 67 by bipartisan agreement during the Reagan administration. But because the oldest people affected were in their 40s at the time, few people noticed that everyone would soon be losing two years of paid time off.