Flight Attendant Fired for Admitting She Needs Food Stamps

by Josie Raymond · 2010-09-08 15:31:00 UTC
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Late last month, a Compass Airlines flight attendant named Kirsten Arianejad gave an interview to a local TV news program in which she revealed that despite working full-time, she also relies on food stamps. Instead of raising her wages, her employer fired her.

"Poverty is not a crime and it is despicable that Compass Airlines would fire an employee for speaking the truth," said Patricia Friend, international president of the profession's largest union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. "Instead of paying hardworking flight attendants a living wage, airline management would rather shame them and make them fear for their jobs." Yep, that and continue to perpetuate the stigma surrounding food stamps.

Ludicrous as it is that Arianejad isn't paid enough to cover her basic needs, it's not surprising. Some of the most popular professions in the United States are also some of the lowest-paid. People working retail sales, for example, earn an average of just under $25,000 per year, while cashiers bring in about $19,000. Having a job is no longer a guarantee against poverty. But having a job that requires skills, training, interpersonal skills and no small degree of risk, like being a flight attendant, should be.

Regional carriers like Compass, which frequently conducts Delta flights, can be added to the list of offenders for paying poverty-level wages to flight attendants (and sometimes pilots too). Flight attendants at Compass earn starting salaries between $13,842 and $15,453 a year, or between $1,153.50 and $1,287.75 a month. That's barely enough to care for one person, much less a family. In Arizona, where Arianejad lives, the maximum an individual can earn and still qualify for food stamp assistance is $1,671.

The 50,000-member Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is lobbying Compass Airlines on behalf of Arianejad. On Tuesday, flight attendants picketed for their laid-off colleague and for better pay in general at Compass's hub station at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Now Change.org is on Team Flight Attendant too. Send a letter to Compass Airlines CEO Tim Campbell demanding that Kirsten Arianejad be reinstated — and that flight attendants be paid a living wage.

Photo credit: Rick Kimpel

Josie Raymond has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.

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