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Anything Doesn’t Go: Southwest’s Actions Not Delightful, But Demeaning to Flight Attendants
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We don’t know if Cole Porter was ever a union activist, but flight attendants at Southwest Airlines are banking on the legendary songwriter’s incredible ear for melody and eye for lyrics to help them publicize and fight a move by the airline’s management to add “fake flight attendants” to cabin crews.
Inspired by the music and lyrics of Porter’s classic “It’s De-Lovely,” members of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 556 have posted the video “It’s Not D-LUVly” on their website.
What’s not “D-LUVly” is management’s recent move to fill the “D” flight attendants position with supervisors and managers. Most of the airline’s flights carry three attendants designated A, B and C, corresponding to their specific duties. Up to now, the “D” attendant slot had been reserved for trainees to help them gain in-flight experience.
The union warns that the new practice is a possible safety risk, violates the bargaining agreement and confuses passengers. It might even have a hint of intimidation, with negotiations for a new pact just around the corner. Says Local 556 President Thom McDaniel:
A supervisor is not a flight attendant. Our members our very upset by this. It feels like fake flight attendants are being put there to spy on them.
The local’s website notes:
With contract negotiations just around the corner, the clear reason for the D Flight Attendant on your jump-seat is good, old-fashioned union-busting. Certainly, Southwest can find better ways to win the trust and goodwill of our work group than creating pretend, substandard Flight Attendants. The new D Flight Attendants are a clear departure from Southwest’s culture of quality, trust and teamwork.
So turn up your speakers, click here and listen to the Night Day Trio of Washington, D.C., sing
The flight is on. The skies are clear.
The Southwest “D” flight attendants are near.
It’s demeaning, It’s deceptive, It’s despicable.
BTW, the unions says it would be “delighted” if you forwarded the video to your friends.
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5 Comments
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That’s a shame as Southwest Airlines usually provides good flight servies. Perhaps we all need to contact Southwest Airline bosses and let them know we back the flight attendants!
“An injury to one, is an injury to all!”
Maybe an all out boycott of southwest for thier treatment of all employees
love it! keep it up!
We’ve added your alert to our website, http://www.prideatwork.org
Thanks for spreading the message!
THE POWER OF SONG
“When they got to Greensburg, the women sang as the car went through the town. A great crowd followed the car, singing with them. As the women, carrying their babies, got off the car before the jail the crowd cheered and cheered them. The police officers handed the prisoners over to the sheriff and both of them looked relieved.
The sheriff said to me, ‘Mother, I would rather you brought me a hundred men than those women. Women are fierce.!’
‘I didn’t bring them to you, sheriff,’ said I, ‘twas the mining company’s judge sent them to you for a presnt.’
The sheriff took them upstairs, put them all in a room and let me stay with them for a long while. I told the women:
‘You sing the whole night long. You can spell one another if you get tired and hoarse. Sleep all day and sing all night and don’t stop for anyone. Say you’re singing to the babies. I will bring the little ones milk and fruit. Just you all sing and sing.”
The sheriff’s wife was an irritable little cat. She used to go up and try to stop them because she couldn’t sleep. Then the sheriff sent for me and asked me to stop them.
‘I can’t stop them,’ said I. ‘They are singing to their little ones. You telephone to the judge to order them loose.’
Complaints came in by the dozens: from hotels and lodging houses and private homes.
‘Those women howl like cats,’ said a hotel keeper to me.
‘That’s no way to speak of women who are singing patriotic songs and lullabies to their little ones,’ said I.
Finally after five days in which everyone in town had been kept awake, the judge ordered their release. He was a narrow-minded, irritable, savage-looking old animal and hated to do it but no one could muzzle those women.”
-Mother Jones-
Joe Hill
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over; and I maintain that if a person can put a few cold, common sense facts into a song, and dress them up in a cloak of humor to take the dryness off of them, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers.
-Joe Hill-