4.28.15 – American Flight Attendants Expose Qatar Airways Employment Practices

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Media Contact:
Leslie Mayo
[email protected]
Anthony DeMaio
[email protected]

FORT WORTH, Texas (April 27, 2015) – Members of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants helped enlighten potential flight crews about the harsh and sexist employment practices of Qatar Airways over the weekend. Qatar Airways hosted a flight attendant recruitment event at a hotel near DFW International Airport on Saturday morning. APFA members met with applicants outside the event to explain the well-documented labor abuses at Qatar Airways and provide them with informational materials.

“The public needs to know the truth about carriers like Qatar,” said APFA National President Laura Glading. “And as a global leader in representing flight crews, I believe APFA has a responsibility to get the information out there. I am proud of the flight attendants that participated and I especially want to thank the members who hatched this plan on Facebook – it was a great grass roots effort.”

The leaflet, titled “Not All Glitz and Glamour,” highlights some of the most egregious labor abuses at the airline. Flight attendants at Qatar Airways live in closely monitored and secure dormitories where visits are entered into a log and reviewed by managers. The nation of Qatar has a sponsorship system which gives employers the ability to withhold exit visas from their employees as punishment. Flight attendants can be fired at any time for any reason, including gaining weight. Airline management is known to freeze the bank accounts of terminated employees, keeping the salary they have already earned. Most offensive, new hire flight attendants must pledge to stay single for five years, ask their manager for permission to marry, and immediately report pregnancies to their supervisors.

APFA is a charter member of the Partnership for Open and Fair Skies, a coalition of airline industry entities that is focused on addressing the market distortions and unfair competition being waged by Persian Gulf carriers Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways. In March, APFA asked American Airlines management to re-evaluate its relationship with Qatar Airways.