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Lede: Flight attendants are working to get Congress to approve an FAA Re-Authorization bill that includes some workplace protections in the air. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

Front and center for flight attendants is health and safety on the job. Bill McGlashen is Executive Assistant to the President at the Association fo Flight Attendants –CWA. He says it’s vital that Congress include protections for flight attendants in the FAA Re-Authorization, because the FAA has sole jurisdiction over the airlines.

[Bill McGlashen]: “We have high injury rates that rank up there with coal miners and other at-risk workers. And yet we don’t enjoy the benefits of OSHA or OSHA-like protections. We have flight attendants who are injured because of repetitive injuries, shoulder and neck injuries, back injuries. We have things that go on in the cabin in terms of temperature standards, air quality. Those have to be attended to. And they haven’t been because the FAA, in its sole
jurisdiction, has not paid attention to those concerns.”

The AFA-CWA expects some pushback from the airlines industry on some of the pro-worker provisions in the FAA Re-Authorization. But McGlashen says the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers are responding to the legitimiate needs of flight attendants.

[McGlashen]: “We’re seeing now for the first time in this new administration really a push to be aggressive in pushing our legislative agenda – and that’s good news.”