Think back to
a trip when your hotel accommodations were so exceptional, the entire trip
still stands out in your mind. You had a  great
experience – a good variety of places to eat, a well-equipped exercise
facility, entertainment, and a room that included a nice décor along
with proper supplies and cleanliness. When you reported for duty, you felt
rested and on top of the world. It showed in your attitude and made difficult
situations with passengers easier to handle.
One of my responsibilities
as MEC Crew Accommodations Chair is to perform “site inspections” of our
hotel properties. These are unannounced visits to our hotels to find out
if they are upholding their contracts with US Airways or if they are continuing
to meet the contractual obligations of our Flight Attendant Agreement.
I have just returned from a site inspection that can be classified as exceptional
– unfortunately, not in a positive light.
This hotel property is in
the middle of a field by a highway. When US Airways contracted with the
property, there were 5 other airlines staying at this hotel. It now serves
as a “pre-military” hotel and the guests are primarily young men and women
enjoying their last night of freedom (and possibly their first night away
from home) before entering boot camp. The celebrating lasted long into
the night – when we were trying get our rest.
Hotel site inspections include
checking all public areas for cleanliness and security. The public areas
of this hotel have not been updated in at least 20 years and the carpets
appeared dirty and mildewed. The carpet in the elevator was visibly wet,
discolored and mildewed, providing a sickening experience in a very closed
space. Food availability was limited to the hotel dining room but my impression
from the lack of cleanliness of this property was that I simply would not
want to eat there. I was thinking, “If this is what the ‘front of the house’
looks like, I shudder to think what the back is like.”
While I did give this hotel
credit for having outside floodlights for security, they shine on the building
and into the rooms, creating virtual daylight all through the night. This
would not be so objectionable if the drapes were hung properly and would
close completely. So much for heightened security. Another lapse in security
was found on an inside room where we discovered a peephole reversed (#925
– make a note of that) providing a view port into the room. And two out
of the five assigned crew rooms did not have functioning deadbolts.
This property is one of our
short overnight hotels, so individual rooms should be conducive to rest
and relaxation. The lighting in the rooms was insufficient to read by,
and only six out of eleven channels on the televisions worked.
Finally, the van ride to
the airport was not the saving grace. Our van was missing three windows
and due to the inclement weather, all crewmembers arrived at the airport
with wet uniforms. The van driver summed it up perfectly when I asked if
any other airlines were staying at this hotel. He said, “We lost all the
other airlines crews and we’d hate to lose you, too.”
Based on this experience,
we are assigning this property, the Ramada Airport MCI, the Lumpy Mattress
Award.
Lumpy Mattress Award
This quarter’s recipient
of the Lumpy Mattress Award should be a clear-cut case of not meeting US
Airways’ requirements for maintaining a contract. After such an experience,
it was difficult to “create an impression of excellence” to our passengers
the following day or to find the energy to get onboard with corporate education’s
“Five Point Plan.”
Hotels receiving five or
more complaints and eligible for runner-up positions include:
LAS—La Quinta
Doubling up crews, dirty
LGA—Clarion
Heat/AC, transportation,
relocating crews
PVD—Holiday Inn
Phones inop, rooms near
ice/vending
RDU—Regal
Location, missed wake up,
transportation
CDG—Le Meridian
Construction noise
So What Do We Do About It?
As with many hotels properties,
cost-effectiveness is the highest priority for the company. Site inspections
have been divided up between AFA, ALPA, and the Purchasing Department.
However, when management does a site inspection, it is always announced
and their rooms are upgraded and pre-inspected. That’s quite different
from what AFA experiences; many site inspections by union representatives
are done on their overnights as working crewmembers.
Your AFA Crew Accommodations
Committee is committed to change the manner in which hotels are selected
and to remove properties that do not meet and/or sustain expectations.
It is imperative that we write up any and all hotel complaints. This can
be performed easily and quickly from our website and will provide the data
we need to prove a property is falling short of its contract with US Airways.
The company cannot continue to expect “excellence” from the front-line
employees when an integral part of our lives are spent away from home and
in hotels that can only be characterized as substandard quality. At the
next quarterly meeting, AFA will be presenting the MCI site inspection
report along with the combined AFA/ALPA “problem properties” listed below:
-
TPA Holiday Inn
(L)
-
EWR Holiday Inn (L) Hasbrouck
-
DTW St. Regis (L)
-
CAE Ramada Inn West
(S)
-
CLE Ramada (S)
-
IND Quality Inn
South (L/S)
-
IND Ramada (S)
-
FAY Holiday Inn (L/S)
-
MYR Landmark (L)
-
PHX Ramada (L)
-
CHA HoJo (L/S)
-
MCI Ramada (S)
Airport Contractual Improvements
Now that we can turn our
attention back to the daily issues of our contract, the issue of hotel
quality has once again resurfaced. The new contract language is the same
with a few exceptions, including:
Section 4 B. 1. Lodging
states: “…If the layover is for fourteen (14:00) or less and requires hotel
accommodation, such hotel shall be at or near the airport unless it is
mutually agreed that local conditions warrant modification…”
Our contract now reflects
that AFA can ‘waive’ the 14:00+/- parameters to meet certain exceptions.
An example is the London hotel where staying at the airport with paid transportation
into the city was preferable over the metropolitan area of Brighton.
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August 7, 2000
– The FAA and OSHA announced today they have reached a Memorandum
of Understanding (MOU) 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).”
In February 2000, AFA members
raised the intensity of their fight to win occupational safety and health
protections with a campaign called OSHA NOW! Flight attendants attracted
high profile media attention by leafleting, rallying at airports and in
front of the FAA, circulating petitions, forming coalitions with sympathetic
groups, and calling on politicians to support the fight.
“We fought hard to win occupational
safety and health protections,” said Patricia Friend, AFA’s International
President. “Quite frankly, its about time we were extended the protections
most American workers have enjoyed for decades. We will be closely monitoring
this agreement between the FAA and OSHA to ensure that actions will follow
these words of ‘understanding.’ 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.”
An AFA review of 1998 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. That is 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.
According to the Memorandum
of Understanding, the FAA and OSHA have 120 days to produce a report that
will describe “whether and to what extent OSHA’s existing standards and
regulations on  recordkeeping,
bloodborne pathogens, noise, sanitation, hazard communication, anti-discrimination,
and access to employee exposure/medical records may be applied.” At that
point, we will hopefully have a clear idea of the “first pass” OSHA protections
that will be applied to flight attendants. After that, the FAA and OSHA
will review the applicability of other OSHA standards; that is, whether
they can be applied without compromising aviation safety.
AFA believes that addressing
the occupational safety and health hazards that flight attendants face
on the job will actually benefit aviation safety because flight attendants,
who are charged with aviation safety, will be better able to do their job!
The following are some of
the issues flight attendants face that may be improved with OSHA protections.
Injuries from
carry-on baggage.
In 1998, AFA filed a petition
for rulemaking with the FAA asking for a single industry-wide carry-on
baggage limit per passenger. Despite support from almost all the major
airlines, the FAA has not yet acted on it. The fact that forcefully lifting,
lowering, pushing, and pulling carry-on baggage is a core element should
mean that if OSHA’s proposed ergonomics standard was passed, flight attendants
would be covered. The airlines would have to analyze, address, and report
on the ergonomic hazards of our job.
Injuries from
service carts.
In 1987, AFA filed a petition
for the FAA to establish a new regulation concerning cabin service carts.
The proposal sought to limit the force needed to move a cart, the effort
required to use the brake system, and to require continuing maintenance
and tests of the carts. Ten years after the petition was filed, it was
turned down on the basis that “The FAA has determined that the issues addressed
in your letter may have merit but do not address an immediate safety concern.”
One possibility is that OSHA could establish a so-called “vertical standard”
for the aviation industry that could dictate that ergo-friendly equipment
and design standards are applied to service carts. (OSHA has already published
nine such “vertical” or “industry-specific” standards for nine other industries.)
Inadequate protection
from exposure to pathogens in blood and other bodily fluids.
According to FAA regulations,
crewmembers must be instructed in the handling of “illness, injury, or
other abnormal situations involving passengers or crewmembers.” If covered
by the OSHA bloodborne pathogen standard, flight attendants would have
access to an employer-paid Hepatitis B vaccination. They would also get
education and training on protection, and medical testing and follow-up
as necessary. The applicability of this standard to flight attendants is
currently being reviewed.
Inadequate sanitation.
There is little mention of sanitation
in the FARs. One exception is “The floor surface of all areas which are
likely to become wet in service must have slip resistant properties.” OSHA’s
sanitation standard requires clean work areas, dry floors, well-constructed
garbage receptacles, hand-washing facilities, sanitary toilets, and appropriate
procedures for food handling and storage. The applicability of this standard
to flight attendants is currently being reviewed.
Exposure to high
noise levels without provisioning for monitoring or audiometric testing.
There is no mention of noise
exposure or noise-induced hearing loss in the Federal Aviation Regulations
(FARs). The OSHA noise standard defines limits for maximum permissible
noise levels. The standard requires employers to “administer a continuing,
effective hearing conservation program” that includes noise monitoring,
employee notification of noise levels, annual audiometric testing, and
employee training if workers are exposed to noise levels equivalent to
one-half of the permissible exposure limit. The applicability of this standard
to flight attendants is currently being reviewed.
Exposure to cosmic
radiation.
AFA has published a bulletin
on the health risks associated with in-flight exposure to cosmic radiation
and will post it on the AFA web site. In short, the risks include cancer,
genetic damage, and damage to a developing fetus. Exposure is more intense
at higher latitudes and altitudes, and it accumulates with flight time.
Also, approximately every eleven years, intense solar storms can significantly
increase the exposure of crewmembers. In 1996, the countries of the European
Union passed a law that requires airlines to inform their crewmembers of
health risks associated with in-flight exposure to cosmic radiation and
provide them with an assessment of the cumulative exposure of each worker.
For pregnant workers, the law mandated that the employer organize the employee’s
work schedule in a manner that will reduce the cosmic radiation exposure
to a total of 1 mSv (100mrem).
FAA Advisory Circular 120-52
recommends no more than 0.5 mSv per month for a pregnant crewmember. An
average month of 80 hours flying between DCA-SEA will give .57 mSv per
month exposure. The FAA has recognized cosmic radiation as an occupational
hazard for crewmembers since 1990 and has published two advisory circulars
to inform crewmembers of the risks and provide educational material. However,
without the pressure of law, compliance is not required. While OSHA does
regulate exposure to a variety of different radiation types, it does not
currently regulate exposure to cosmic radiation at this time because OSHA
only regulates working conditions on the surface of the earth. However,
it is possible that OSHA, perhaps with input from the FAA, could develop
standards and guidelines for cosmic radiation exposure.
In short, the fact that the
FAA and OSHA have formally agreed to work together to address protections
for the safety and health hazards that flight attendants face on the job
is very good news. AFA will make certain that they stick to their plan.
OSHA NOW! |
