Message from JetBlue Organizers: Personal Time Has Value

Organizing
21 July 2022

(Message from the JetBlue Organizing Committee. Find out how you can support the effort to bring union rights, wages, and benefits to JetBlue Ground Ops: Contact an organizer HERE>>)

One of the great things about working for a major airline is the ability to travel the world, visit family in different parts of the world and live a life that most people envy. However, to fully enjoy these great benefits, we need to have the ability to use our vacation time.

All IAM major airline contracts have both a vacation and a sick bank (a comparison is on the reverse side of this flyer). This way, if you become ill, you can use your sick time, not the time you have accrued for vacation.

With PTO, it all comes out of the same bank, so if you get sick you will have less paid time off to spend with your family and friends. IAM contracts also guarantee that vacation, whether it be block vacation or day at a time, can be used. Without a contract, JetBlue management can, and does, deny PTO usage.

IAM contracts outline how much block vacation must be posted and granted for each week of the year and how many day at a time vacation days can be granted each day on each shift. Union representatives meet with airline management continually to ensure union members have the right to use their hard-earned vacation time.

Union contracts protect workers’ ability to live a fully human life. And part of being fully human is to be able to spend time away from work with loved ones and live life to the fullest. When we have to depend on the charity of management to approve our paid time off, it’s dehumanizing. That’s what union contracts seek to prevent. 

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