Airline Executives Rerouting Public Health Policy
As we fly Into the new year, will we forget that airlines chose profits over public health?
During peak holiday travel, airline executives were forced to cancel thousands of flights as crews became ill with COVID-related variants. Rather than take responsibility for not hiring enough workers, executives lobbied to change public health policy regarding employee quarantine times even after receiving hundreds of billions in aid from the government.
Thankfully, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA isn’t letting management’s poor planning slide. The AFA has pushed back against the corporate campaign to force workers to come in sick just to keep the operation humming. It’s appalling that executives still don’t have a proper plan for taking care of their employees two years into this pandemic.
A Delta jet at Fort Lauderdale International Airport
Delta Airlines asked the CDC if they could reduce the mandatory quarantine time from ten days to five days without requiring a negative test. Their primary argument was that they didn’t have enough staff members available to cover for the people who were out sick. This request blatantly undercuts the credibility of the agency charged with governing public health guidance.
And let’s be honest, mixed messaging has already caused a multitude of problems throughout the pandemic. The general public is stuck not knowing what to believe or who they can trust for accurate information. This puts flight attendants and every other worker on the front lines in a sticky situation when enforcing safety policies.
We’ve seen flight attendants get attacked when asking passengers to wear their masks properly—why aren’t airline executives pushing back against this issue? Why are they trying to push their employees further into harm’s way?
Of course, we already know the answer to this. All executives care about is money. If they can make more money by forcing sick employees to work, they’ll challenge the CDC.
And as of right now, the corporations are winning. Their lobbying was effective, and the CDC ultimately reduced the quarantine time from ten to five days if the person isn’t symptomatic. They suggest that people should still wear a mask around others for an additional five days, but they changed the policy to minimize disruptions in schools and businesses.
In the AFA’s statement, President Sara Nelson states, “The CDC gave a medical explanation about why the agency has decided to reduce the quarantine requirements from ten to five days, but the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring.”
It isn’t reassuring—the CDC has essentially given corporations the green light to put staffing needs before employee health.
And it’s not just Delta pushing for the shortened quarantine timeline. In a letter to the CDC, JetBlue’s CEO Robin Hayes asked them to reconsider the ten-day mandate because it was “extremely disruptive” to their operations.
Nicholas E Calio, a representative from Airlines for America, penned a similar letter but went so far as to say that they “look forward to working with [the CDC] to implement sound policies that protect the health and safety of our workforce and customers as the pandemic evolves.” By reading that statement, it’s hard to believe that Calio was pushing for a shorter quarantine time.
As Nelson points out, forcing a five-day timeline risks sending employees back to work before they’re fully recovered. And would it really be good customer service if we infect a plane full of people with COVID because we’re unwilling to let employees take all the sick days they need?
Nelson continues to state that forcing employees back to go back to work sooner rather than later “will cause a much greater disruption than any ‘staffing shortages.’”
Instead of calling on the CDC to shorten quarantine times, Nelson and the AFA have turned their attention to Congress. They’re currently asking for legislators to enforce sick leave policies that will actually keep workers safe by reducing the pressure on workers to return to work while they’re still ill.
This touches on a massive issue across the entire country. As of March 2020, 22% of US workers didn’t have access to paid sick leave policies, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. We agree that airline executives are focusing on the wrong issue.
No one likes having their flight canceled. But wouldn’t you prefer to get on a plane without having to worry that the person serving your drinks cut their quarantine short and didn’t have to provide a negative test?
And we get it—4,000 canceled flights in 48 hours is a lot. Out of United’s 129 canceled flights on December 28, 2021, 93 were due to staffing shortages caused by ill workers or employees in quarantine.
It’s tough when flight attendants form a closely-knit community of individuals who hop from plane to plane. But the root of the issue isn’t quarantine requirements; it’s the fact that the airlines are trying to cut corners by not hiring enough staff members to balance out the shortages caused by COVID.
You would hope that a passenger wouldn’t board a flight if they were recently exposed to COVID, so why are we expecting flight attendants and other airline employees to do so?
It’s bad Jetiquette for any person to get on a flight if they aren’t feeling well, and it’s horrible that we have to have this discussion because of greedy airline executives.
We can’t say it better than Sara Nelson:
“After more than 800,000 funerals, millions suffering effects of long COVID, our hospitals so full people can’t get the medical treatment they need, and frontline workers facing violent attacks simply for working to keep everyone safe, can we finally take this pandemic seriously and do what needs to be done to end it? Our workplace is the world. We will isolate ourselves from the world if we don’t lead on safety. Only truth and solidarity will get us there.”
We stand with Sara Nelson and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA in the fight for better care for airline employees and workers everywhere.
