As United Flight Attendants Vote, A.I. And Blog Falsehoods Intrude

United Airlines flight attendants began voting Monday on a tentative contract agreement that raises average salaries about 27%, improves the grievance procedure, and offers boarding pay for the first time, but social media and some internet postings make the deal sound unfavorable.

“What’s been very disheartening in this ratification has been the onset of A.I. and Chat GPT and the explosion of blogs that just report things that A.I. is incorrectly reporting and do not check with the union for accuracy,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents about 50,000 flight attendants including 29,000 at United. Voting ends July 29.

“There have been posts that are entirely wrong,” Nelson said, citing posts on hotel policy, which has in fact improved; union strategy in talks, which has been misinterpreted; airline surveillance of flight attendant texts, which has never been considered and others. “These blogs have perpetuated misinformation, making it difficult for flight attendants to make an informed decision,” she said.

“A.I. spits out whatever you want,” Nelson said. “You ask a question, ‘What’s wrong with the United contract?’ and it will look for all of the bad comments anyone has made. It has no ability to have a human filter of the nuances.” Often, the false posts on the blogs are picked up by A.I.

“Typically you don’t see a lot of reporting by news outlets during the course of a vote, unless there is something newsworthy to report,” Nelson said. But in covering the airline industry, newspapers – with their patterns of coverage and their standards for reporting — have largely been replaced by bloggers and influencers with different patterns and standards.

Ken Diaz, president of the United AFA chapter, said he has discussed the tentative agreement in meetings at seven United hubs as well as in several virtual meetings, some with as many as 5,000 flight attendants. (Diaz arrived at the Guam base on Monday after 25 hours of flying.) “There is so much misinformation from bloggers, but once we have the conversation and clarify, people understand it is not factual,” he said.

“Some bloggers say we made many concessions,” Diaz said. “But we didn’t give up any of our work rules. In fact, we made many improvements.” On June 10, June the blog “Live and Let’s Fly” posted a story entitled “6 Clauses That Could Derail United’s New Flight Attendant Contract. It listed five undesirable contract changes that it said were in the contract.

On June 12, after AFA reached out, the blog added notes in red print in which the union responded “false” or “entirely false” to each of the clauses. In an update, the blog said “The info in my original story was shared by a reliable inside source” and asked “What motive, beyond sabotage, would someone have in deliberately sharing such detailed false information?”

As an example, one of the erroneously cited changes was that “‘Tech-based monitoring’ via apps and cameras may be used for surveillance and discipline without union approval.” AFA called that one “entirely false.”

Nelson said that contractual hotel policy is among the areas where posting “has been significantly incorrect.” The twitter account “JonNYC” posted in June that hotels for flight attendants had been downgraded, and the blog “One Mile At a Time” rewrote the post under the headline “United Flight Attendants Stay At Worst Layover Hotels.” However, “there is significantly improved hotel language,” Nelson said. “It requires the company to involve the union in the entire procurement process, with a clear set of requirements for hotels in the contract that enforces the hotel quality we have always experienced and gives us more teeth. So it’s Hilton, Weston, Marriott quality.”

The contract now ensures that flight attendants with layovers over 17 hours or more go to a downtown hotel. It was previously 19 hours. AFA also protected the requirement that quicker turnarounds are housed closer to the airport. JonNYC did not respond to a twitter message.

In “View From the Wing,” veteran airline blogger Gary Leff wrote that flight attendants unhappy with the contract were claiming that union leaders were getting a pay raise. Leff said Tuesday he expects to clarify the post after discussion with AFA. (Diaz said it is not true that leaders are getting pay raises under the contract, noting “That would be illegal.”)

Leff has written about pros and cons of the contract and the union strategy. He wrote that “the union made a strategic blunder in slow-walking contract negotiations, letting American Airlines go first” but also noted that “Many concerns with the tentative agreement are misreadings.”

Leff said Tuesday, “It seemed like a reasonable strategy to have American go first,” especially with Biden as president. However, AFA “seemingly lost leverage with the change in administrations,” he said.

“Given the current environment, though, AFA’s judgment that this is the best top line they can do is likely correct – and so the question to cabin crew is whether it reflects the right priorities in allocating those dollars,” Leff said.

Nelson said United flight attendants did not wait for the completion of American flight attendant talks before negotiating. “We weren’t waiting for anything,” she said. Rather, after the pandemic, most airline unions had open contracts to negotiate. “What’s significant about this round is that it really was pattern bargaining, all of the flight attendants with common demands, on the heels of the same thing happening with pilots,” she said. The United contract is “one step above all the contracts that were negotiated” earlier,” including Alaska, American and Southwest, and has some benefits that non-union Delta lacks, she said.