White House & Republican leadership jeopardize flight attendants in FAA Reauthorization

The FAA Reauthorization bill is a piece of legislation that must be passed by Congress approximately every three years in order to keep the FAA operating. This legislation is always AFA’s best opportunity to address issues that are important to flight attendants because it is considered a “must-pass” piece of legislation. This year, Congress has been working on a bill that would authorize and allow the FAA to continue its functions and programs for another four years.

AFA has been working to address a number of our legislative goals in this year’s FAA Reauthorization legislation. We were successful in convincing the House of Representatives and the Senate to include provisions that would improve and monitor cabin air quality as well as certification of flight attendants. These were major victories for AFA, especially because certification has been a legislative priority of the union for over 30 years.

The Senate and House versions of the FAA Reauthorization contained a number of differences that needed to be worked out in a “conference committee”. A conference committee is composed of members from the Senate and House who have the most expertise on the issues addressed in the legislation. Their responsibility is to work out differences between the two bills so that the legislation can go to the President for his signature. The FAA Reauthorization conference committee had been meeting and hoping to complete work on a final bill before Congress left on its month-long August recess. Both sides were extremely close to reaching a final agreement and passing the legislation, which would have included our great victories for AFA on flight attendant certification and cabin air quality.

However, in the final late night hours of negotiations, meddling by the White House and the Congressional Republican leadership undermined the bipartisan cooperation in Congress on this legislation and resulted in a dangerous and controversial bill that all of organized labor, including AFA, is working to defeat. The bill sets a number of dangerous precedents that must be stopped.

As far as AFA is concerned, the legislation dramatically undermines our efforts on flight attendant security training. The Reauthorization bill originally included provisions that changed our security training. Republicans on the Committee had been working with the carriers to make flight attendant security training completely voluntary – and paid for by the flight attendants. Since it was clear that changes would be made to the training, we worked with both Democrats and Republicans to make these changes as minimal as possible, keep as much of the training as possible mandatory, and guarantee that a flight attendant would not have to pay for any training themselves. Finally, language was written that AFA was not completely satisfied with, but it protected as much of our security training as possible. It also prevented the carriers and the House Republican leadership from making all training completely voluntary.

But at the last minute, Continental Airlines went to House Republican Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) to request a further change. Rep. DeLay ordered the Republicans on the conference committee to make a change that would leave it entirely up to the discretion of TSA and the Bush White House as to whether or not they would issue guidelines for flight attendant security training.

Prior to this change, it was mandated that the TSA must issue basic security training guidelines that all airlines would have to abide by. With this change, it is now up to the White House and the TSA to issue guidelines if they decide to get around to doing it. You can be assured that the airlines will put incredible pressure on their friends in this administration to make sure those guidelines are never issued. We will be forced back to the pre-September 11th world, where each carrier provides inadequate security training without any guidelines to prepare flight attendants to address inflight security threats.

The legislation also includes dangerous provisions that would allow for the privatization of the air traffic controllers and support staff at the control towers. The House and Senate both, in bipartisan votes, agreed to prevent this privatization. However, the White House, as it increasingly does, ignored the will of Congress and ordered the Republican leadership to insert language that gives them the ability to contract out these services. Quite simply, the White House hopes to contract out the air traffic controllers and the support staff at the towers to the lowest bidder. We could see these vital aviation professionals working for the minimum wage with no benefits if this White House gets its way. The Congressional Republican leadership followed the White House marching orders and, against their own alleged principles, made the requested change.

A third dangerous provision allows for the introduction of cabotage. Cabotage is the ability for a foreign carrier to serve and fly domestic routes. Currently, no foreign carrier is allowed to serve point-to-point domestic routes. The FAA Reauthorization includes a provision that would allow a foreign cargo carrier to fly domestic routes as long as that aircraft first lands at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska. This is a dangerous precedent that will ultimately lead to foreign owned carriers flying domestic routes and cutting into American owned carriers’ business on important and profitable routes. It will only result in the loss of jobs at U.S. carriers.

Obviously, AFA opposes all these positions. These three provisions set a dangerous precedent and must be defeated. We will be working closely with the Transportation Trades Department and the entire AFL-CIO to defeat this attempt by the White House and Congressional Republican leadership to force their political agenda into the FAA Reauthorization.