AFA Negotiations Update
Dear Silver Flight Attendants
This week your Negotiating Committee met for the first time since we requested federal mediation last month. A federal Mediator named Eva Durham has been appointed to oversee our negotiations. Eva Durham is an airline industry veteran with 40 years of experience including being a flight attendant early in her airline career.
Eva scheduled a meeting between the AFA and Silver Management on August 2nd and 3rd and September 7th and 8th at Silver Airways Headquarters.
We will pick up Negotiations where we left off starting with several open issues that affect our quality of work-life here at Silver involving the health and safety of Silver Flight Attendants. The plan is to discuss the most important issue—Compensation—after we resolve the non-compensation issues.
Since we last met with the company, several things have happened. American Airlines negotiated an industry-leading agreement with its subsidiary regionals (Envoy, Piedmont, and PSA) that provides for a starting salary of over $27/hr plus other bonus. We also learned that Silver Management negotiated an industry-leading agreement with the pilots. The AFA received a copy of the agreement that Silver reached with the pilots that provides silver pilots with 50% pay increases, a flying override, a quarterly retention bonus, and a personal and sick day buyback program. The million-dollar deal reached with the pilots is quite impressive for a company that says they “can’t afford” to pay the flight attendants a living wage.
As of June 2022, the 12-month inflation rate has reached 9.1%. Silver Flight Attendants deserve to be paid a living wage that keeps up with inflation and rewards us for the hard work and sacrifices we have made for Silver in the past several years. For years the Company has financially benefited from paying us low wages that haven’t kept up with inflation. Your Union will not allow this to continue in our next Contract.
We will provide you with an update later next week. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
