The roughly 30,000 flight attendants at United Airlines approved a new five-year labor contract on Tuesday that includes 31% average raises to base pay by August, according to a report by CNBC.
The union said the contract won 82% approval, with close to 90% of eligible flight attendants casting ballots. The deal marks the last of the major carriers with unionized flight crews to reach a labor agreement following the Covid pandemic.
The contract includes a roughly 7% to 8% increase in total compensation, $741 million in back pay, and a range of quality-of-life changes. Among those changes are restrictions on red-eye flights and what the union calls "sit pay," which provides compensation during disruptions lasting more than two and a half hours.
One of the more notable elements of the deal is boarding pay, compensation for the time when the aircraft door is open and passengers are getting on. For years, airlines had started flight attendants' pay clock only after the boarding door was closed, a practice that unions had long pushed to change.
The company and the Association of Flight Attendants reached a preliminary agreement in March. Flight attendants had rejected a contract the previous year before negotiations resumed.
"The contract will immediately change the lives of United Flight Attendants, especially our thousands of new hires who have been hired since the pandemic," said Ken Diaz, president of the United chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants.
The deal closes a chapter of post-pandemic labor negotiations that have reshaped compensation across the airline industry. United's flight attendants had gone without a raise for close to six years before Tuesday's ratification.
