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TWA took payments out of our meager paychecks. We paid for three outfits for summer and three for winter. Should the company change our uniforms, they would then pay for the replacements. When I started with TWA in 1969, we were told we had to pay for our first set of uniforms. Let’s talk about uniforms since the subject was important in that first union contract. Like Edith, it did not take me long to become a union activist.6 View this 18 minute video here: Īll these gutsy women left a lasting legacy to women workers and to flight attendants. Before flying for United, Edith Lauterbach (mentioned above) had earned a degree in political science from UC Berkeley in 1942, and later said she joined United as “a lark.” I, too, had earned a degree in political science (1967).
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Current coverage includes discussion of the vital role of flight attendants during the 9/11 attacks and introduces flight attendants as aviation’s “first responders”. She continues to be involved in union work with AFA! Produced by the current flight attendant union, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), the film begins with historical footage. Update: I just this morning discovered a youtube video featuring interviews with both Ada Brown and Edith Lauterbach! Lauterbach retired from United in 1989. stewardesses at sixteen air lines had union representation. The successful bargaining at United changed the picture at every airline! Within five years two-thirds of U.S.
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took home average yearly pay of between $4,300 and $5,300.5 Other airline ground workers such as maintenance, clerical, etc. was just under $3,300, while pilots and co-pilots claimed more than three times as much.
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By 1955 the average salary for flight attendants in the U.S. In the generally well-paid airline industry, flight attendants were at the bottom of the wage ladder. She is forced to retire from her career and the union presidency.4 Note: in 1947 ALSA President Ada Brown, 30, marries and becomes a victim of United’s no-marriage rule. All these were vitally important work rule improvements for the working women at United. A year later, in April 1946, the women at ALSA had won a contract raising monthly salaries to $155, won a limit of 85 in-flight hours per month, and initiated pay for all the hours spent working on the ground, not just in-flight hours.īy contract, the company agreed to pay for half the initial cost of the uniforms and finally agreed to a grievance procedure to challenge disciplinary actions and dismissals. Those little planes were all over the sky in bad weather.”3īy August 1945 they had organized the Air Line Stewardess Association (ALSA) and began contract negotiations with United. We had to crawl on our hands and knees during rough weather and deliver meals in the turbulence, clean up after the passengers when they got sick…. “It was a male-dominated industry and they weren’t anxious to have women hang around.” Later she added, “After we flew for a while, we realized it wasn’t as glamorous as we thought. “I had planned to fly one year and quit,” Lauterbach told an interviewer in 1985. Other United stewardesses including Sally Thometz, Frances Hall, Edith Lauterbach and Sally Watt became enthusiastic union organizers–organizing at the bases in San Francisco, Denver, and Chicago. She recalled, “As chief stewardess I tried to get improvements for the girls with salary, flight regulations, and protection from unjust firing.”2
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Brown, frustrated by the company’s unwillingness to upgrade conditions for the stewardesses, left her management position to return to the all-female rank and file and to begin organizing a union. In late 1944 United’s chief stewardess, Ada J. If a stewardess didn’t show up to replace you on multi-stops across the country, the company would just say, ‘You have to continue flying.'” 1 There were no rules or regulations about monthly flight time. One union activist said, “We had no rights, let’s put it that way. In 1945 (my birth year) United Airlines stewardesses were paid the same $125 a month as the initial group of “sky girls” in 1930! Determined and single-minded women began organizing, first at United. I want you to know the United Airlines stewardesses who started the first stewardess union. I’ve recently been writing about my own family, but before leaving the 1940s time frame, I’m writing about women who paved the way for me to work as a flight attendant. As a woman passionate about the liberation of women, I’m weaving several threads through my story telling.