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Flight Attendants Condemn Demeaning Spirit Airline Ads |
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The whole world has hailed the professionalism and heroism of flight attendants aboard US Airways Flight 1549 who were instrumental in the safe evacuation of 150 passengers after the plane made an emergency water landing in New York’s Hudson River. But just days later, flight attendants at another airline were being disrespected and insulted by their own corporate employer.
Flight Attendants-CWA President Patricia Friend wrote Spirit Airlines Inc. CEO Ben Baldanza this month to condemn the carrier’s new ad campaign that she says is demeaning to women.
If your intent was to insult and demean your customers, employees and future customers, you may well have succeeded. I feel as though I have entered a time warp and I am reliving the battles for respect and justice for women that we fought 40 years ago.
The ads, which promote the airline’s discount specials, are laden with cheeky sexual innuendos and double entendres. One touts how proud the airline is of its “DDs,” an abbreviation for its “Deep Discounts.” Another runs in big letters “M.I.L.F.: Many Islands Low Fares” with a picture of a blond woman in the foreground. Persons who use text mail a lot will recognize the abbreviation for a more sexually provocative phrase. Friend says the ads not only insult the hardworking flight attendants at Spirit, but all flight attendants and anyone who respects women workers.
She says she also has received complaints that some of the ads are offensive to members of the Jewish faith.
Friend is urging flight attendants and anyone who believes in justice for women to let Baldanza know how outrageous the airline’s actions really are by sending him an e-mail at ben.baldanza@spiritair.com.
Piling on even more insults, the airline is proposing to force flight attendants to wear in-flight aprons with an alcoholic beverage logo, a move Friend says “must be reversed.” In the letter, she writes:
The proposed aprons diminishes the primary and federally mandated role of flight attendants as safety professionals and our roles as first responders on board, not to mention the offense the aprons carry for employees with strong religious convictions.
Friend calls on Baldanza to
immediately pull these campaigns and instruct your marketing department to develop a professional, respectful program of advertising. I am confident I will joined in this request by many other interested parties.
Expressing outrage at Spirit’s moves, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker says:
With the focus placed this last week on the heroic actions of the US Air pilot and crew whose experience and expertise saved the lives of the passengers, I think it is most appropriate that we speak out on this. Airline safety should certainly sell over sexual innuendos.
7 Comments
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The fact that the airline people belong to a union has nothing to do with their heroic act. Unions are one of the reasons that a 12,000 dollar pickup now costs 29000 dollars. Unions are holding pots for the uneducated where non-performers are rewarded and hard work is punished.
If you are having problems with the sexual connotations of the airline commercials, then have a talk with the screen actors union which produces the commericals.
Obviously you have no clue to the reason for our ecconomic woes. The reason a $12,000 pick-up costs $29,000 is because Bush and his Corporae Greed buddies have been rapeing this country for the past eight years. The real Crime is the expenduitures for a War that should have never been waged and the lieing Basta_ _’s who concocted it.
The flight crew are absolute Heroes and the reason is because their Unions, AFA-CWA and ALPA, fought for and continue to fight for the Safety training they had.
God Bles them and the Unions who fight for them and the Air Traveling public.
Jim Gordon - Proud CWA Union Member
No matter what company produces the commercials for the airline, the approval or disapproval of the content lies solely with the client. If Mr. Baldanza sees nothing wrong with the blatant sexism of the ads, perhaps he needs to see it from a different perspective.
I used my educational background to discover that the Screen Actors Guild doesn’t own or operate any advertising agencies. Most producers don’t belong to unions per se; the actors and writers generally do.
As a union member who has worked for the same employer for 32 years, and received multiple awards for job performance, I am offended by your anti-union remark. My union brothers and sisters on the job and the ones I represent on the executive board of my UFCW local are hard working, dedicated individuals by and large. There is no shame in working for a living—if we were all college material, who’d build any trucks at all?
Many union hands, hard-working hands touch the materials that are needed to build that truck. From the mines to the assembly line, there are union brothers and sisters without whose toil and sweat there would be no auto industry. But I guarantee that the price tag comes from corporate hands!
Mr. Baldanza is not only a sexist, he also discrimates against his employees that are over a certain age. Anyone interested in evidence is welcome to write me at: saagh.gabhan@bellsouth.net.
Thank you.
Wishing you well, CWA!
I am not a union member. I have never had the opportunity to be. But I am a union supporter. I know that any rights and respect I enjoy in a work place is due to the efforts of people who form America’s labor unions. I speak with many people who are not union members and who resent the unions and blame many ills upon them. I think to some degree it is jealosy. If they see union members doing well, instead of finding the courage to form their own unions, they try to drag down those that they see as fortunate. This is wrong headed. Unions benefit all workers. Every union victory that requires employers to respect their employees raises the tide a little for all of us.
Birds are a reason to avoid flying ever again, CWA members are a reason to take a chance on not being confined to just my own little corner of the world.
Thank you, also, for insisting that women in the workplace be respected.
BadBob is way off on this one as any thoughtful person can see. Unions are the advocates for safe workplaces, emergency training, and fair treatment of all employees. The recent “Miracle on the Hudson” is a testament to the preparedness training that unions have fought for and support for their members. Refer back to the emergency response to Katrina to find how well the privateers operate in an emergency.
“Airline safety should certainly sell over sexual innuendos.”
Yes, Arlene Holt Baker, it SHOULD, but for those of us living in the real world, we know that it’s just not reality. No airline promotes itself as “being safer than____” so any airline who promotes its “safety advantage” over others is pissing advertising dollars away. It appears to me that Spirit, like all other airlines these days is doing what it can to drum up business to stay alive. If “sexual innuendos” help keep their planes full, the company in business, and THEIR EMPLOYEES WORKING, what wrong with that?
I am a union supporter, but not a union member, I am all for employees getting fair compensation for jobs well done. But, plueeese, stop bitching about things your employer does in an attempt to keep his company dolvent and his workers employed