OSHA Protections Extended to Flight Attendants

On Monday, August 7, AFA flight attendants reached another historic milestone in their continuing fight for equality in the workplace.

Representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration met at the Department of Labor for the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that extends OSHA protection to flight attendants across the country. AFA members applauded as Jane Garvey of the FAA and Charles Jeffress of OSHA formalized the agreement.

The MOU, hastened by AFA's six month flight attendant-driven media and legislative blitz, OSHA NOW!, establishes a "procedure for coordinating and supporting enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act with respect to the working conditions of employees on the aircraft in operation (other than flight crew)." 

The victory has been a long time coming. "We've fought hard to win occupational safety and health protections," said AFA President Pat Friend. "Quite frankly, it's about time we were extended the protections most American workers have enjoyed for decades."

For 25 years, flight attendants' safety and health issues remained under FAA jurisdiction. Decades of inaction by the FAA to create workplace improvements in safety and health forced AFA flight attendants to step up their fight this spring.

AFA members lobbied on Capitol Hill, appealing to 'flight attendant friendly' legislators. Activists around the country collected thousands of signatures on a petition addressed to Jane Garvey and Charles Jeffress, asking them to take action. AFA members delivered a giant heart made of ice to Garvey on Valentine's Day, asking her to have a heart and relinquish FAA jurisdiction. Flight attendants rallied outside the FAA on Workers' Memorial Day, sharing stories of injuries and illnesses that they'd received on the job. AFA members rallied and picketed, leafleted and lobbied, and by standing together, achieved their goal.

Dozens of AFA members turned out to witness the signing of the MOU. Jane Garvey praised AFA flight attendants for the professional way in which they advocated for change in their workplace. She also thanked three people who worked hard to move the agreement along: Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater, Ed Wytkind of the Transportation Trades Division of the AFL-CIO, and AFA International President Pat Friend.

Pat Friend presented red and yellow OSHA NOW! T-shirts to Garvey and Jeffress after the MOU was signed. The brightly colored shirts, which have become symbols of AFA unity and have grabbed media attention for months, drew a laugh from the crowd when Jane Garvey asked, "These shirts will be retired now, won't they?"

Now that the MOU between the FAA and OSHA has been signed, flight attendants are eager to see health and safety improvements made and regulated in the workplace. But the process will take time. According to the agreement, a joint team from the FAA and OSHA "will produce a first report within 120 days from the date of the execution of the MOU [December 6, 2000]." OSHA will be looking at whether and how "regulations on record keeping, bloodborne pathogens, noise, sanitation, hazard communication, anti-discrimination and access to employee exposure/medical records may be applied" without compromising aviation safety. Once that report is completed, AFA will continue to push OSHA to implement additional protections to make flight attendants' jobs safer.

AFA members have taken the first big step toward safety and health protections in the workplace, but this is only the beginning. Sonny Hall, President of the Transportation Trades Department, issued a statement on the flight attendants' OSHA victory. "While today's action is a vital first step, transportation labor will not rest until the process initiated today results in every flight attendant being afforded the basic safety and health protections that millions of other American workers have come to expect and appreciate." AFA President Pat Friend agrees. "We will be closely monitoring this agreement between the FAA and OSHA to ensure that actions will follow these words of 'understanding'," she declared. "If we don't see a significant improvement in the occupational safety of flight attendants in the coming year, we will start this fight all over again."

Congratulations to all AFA members. Once again, you've proven that solidarity and action equal victory. And this is a victory that was worth the fight.

Frequently Asked Questions  August 18, 2000

Have you got questions? We've got answers. 

On Monday, August 7, representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) met in Washington to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two agencies.

What will the agreement between the FAA and OSHA mean for us?

The purpose of the MOU is to take flight attendants' occupational safety and health issues out of the jurisdiction of the FAA, where they had been languishing for 25 years without action, and move them under the authority of OSHA.

By December 6, 2000, OSHA is required by the terms of the MOU to report on whether and to what extent existing OSHA standards and regulations may be applied to the airplane cabin. AFA anticipates that implementation of these specific safety and health standards may be slow - the airlines will then have a chance to respond. In the months following the initial report, OSHA and the FAA will continue to look another problems in the cabin and make recommendations to make our workplace safer.

AFA expects that the initial round of OSHA investigation and enforcement will include the following issues: 

• Communication of chemical hazards Employee access to injury/illness and exposure records
• Exposure to potentially contaminated blood or other fluids
• Noise exposure
• Record-keeping/reporting of illness and recordable injuries
• Sanitation

Once OSHA and the FAA have addressed these preliminary issues of importance, AFA hopes that the agency will expand its investigation and begin to address the following safety and health related issues:

OSHA protections won't happen overnight. This process will take time and patience. It's important to remember that flight attendants finally have a government agency that will be monitoring our workplace and protectively watching over us. As a result, our jobs will become much safer.

How can we be sure that OSHA protections are really going to happen?

AFA will closely monitor the progress of OSHA and the cooperation of the FAA. If AFA perceives that no action has been taken, that there has been insufficient change, or that our workplace safety is not markedly improved, then flight attendants will go back on the attack, once again demanding OSHA NOW! AFA members will return to airports to leaflet and picket, lobby members of Congress to stand up for our workplace protections - all of the things that we did together to get OSHA protections in the first place.

Continue documenting any injuries or illnesses that happen to you on the job, and make sure that AFA has a copy of your report. This will help AFA to track if there are other areas covered by OSHA that may need to be applied to flight attendants

Safety and Health Protections Coming to the Airplane Cabi

Congratulations and many thanks to all who have made AFA's OSHA NOW! campaign a great success.

For Immediate Release:

Monday, August 7, 2000

WASHINGTON, DC -- The airplane cabin will be getting safer for flight attendants and passengers because of an agreement today between the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration extending OSHA protections to flight attendants.

The new ruling ends a blistering nationwide campaign by members of the Association of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO, who have fought to extend OSHA protection to in-cabin airline employees.

The extremely high rate of injury to flight attendants translates into a more dangerous airplane cabin environment for everyone, including passengers. An AFA review of injury and illness logs at 11 U.S. airlines showed that out of 31,024 flight attendants, 10% reported an injury that required follow-up medical attention or caused them to lose time from work in 1998. That's more than double the injury rate to miners (4.9%), and more than triple the national average of 3.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

With those startling statistics at hand, the FAA and OSHA announced today they have reached a Memorandum of Understanding, which establishes "a procedure for coordinating and supporting enforcement of the OSHA Act with respect to the working conditions of employees on the aircraft in operation (other than flight crew)."  "We've fought hard to win occupational safety and health protections," said Patricia Friend, AFA's International President. "Quite frankly, it's about time we were extended the protections most American workers have enjoyed for decades."

In February 2000, AFA raised the intensity of their fight to win occupational safety and health protections with a campaign called OSHA NOW!, which included conducting high profile media events, with flight attendant leafleting and rallying at airports and in front of the FAA, getting petitions signed, forming a coalition with sympathetic groups, and calling on politicians to support the fight.

"We will be closely monitoring this agreement between the FAA and OSHA to ensure that actions will follow these words of 'understanding'," said Friend. "If we don't see a significant improvement in the occupational safety of flight attendants in the coming year, we will start this fight all over again."

In 1975, the FAA claimed jurisdiction over the health and safety of flight attendants and pilots. And while the pilots are medically certified and their health is closely monitored by the FAA's Office of Aviation Medicine, occupational safety and health hazards faced by the overwhelmingly female flight attendant profession have essentially been ignored for the past 25 years.

"Flight attendants everywhere would like to thank Vice President Al Gore, Department of Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and Department of Labor Secretary Alexis Herman for their efforts to make this extension of safety and health protections a reality," said Friend.

Flight attendants suffer painful, often debilitating injuries and illnesses related to:

· poorly designed and maintained food and beverage carts that can weigh up to 500 pounds,

· cuts and burns from poorly designed galley equipment and oven racks,

· slipping on galley floors and icy walkways,

· handling or being struck by excessive, over-sized and overweight carry-on baggage,

· exposure to potentially infected blood when providing in-flight emergency medical treatment including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, without the proper equipment or medical follow-up.

Recently the Inspectors' General Office of the U.S. Department of Transportation initiated an investigation of the Federal Aviation Administration's failure to properly protect flight attendants on the job and 81 U.S. Senators and Congressional Representatives have called upon the Secretaries of Transportation and Labor to provide the proper protection.

AFA is the largest flight attendant union in the world, representing over 49,000 flight attendants at 27 airlines. For more information on our fight for OSHA NOW!, visit us @ www.afanet.org.