Job Stress Mounts for Airline Agents

Customer service agents at US Airways, whether they work at airports or in reservations centers, face growing levels of job stress due to understaffing, sluggish computer systems and management's failure to support frontline employees. CWA represents about 3,200 US Airways agents, including about 735 reservations agents.

Our members know that pressure is part of the job, "but excessive pressure can lead to stress, which undermines performance, is costly to employers and can make people ill," said Vonda Hardy, president of CWA Local 3640 which represents US Airways reservations agents in Winston-Salem, N.C.

CWA is working for changes that reduce agents' stress: an increase of 1,000 airport jobs earlier this year, along with new hires in reservations, has helped, and CWA continues to meet with US Airways management to end chronic understaffing of operations.

Agents' responsibilities have expanded dramatically, especially with changing security procedures put in place by the government's Transportation Security Agency. At US Airways, those responsibilities are complicated by the changeover earlier this year to a new computer system and airplanes that routinely are full. The predictable result: customers are angry about long waits or canceled flights and take out their frustration on CWA-represented agents.

CWA was successful in gaining expanded protection for agents under a law passed that made assaulting or intimidating an employee with security duties a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment.

But airline management, after a period of support for agents, again is tending to write up airport workers based on a customer complaint, and often over issues that the agent has no ability to solve, said John Hanson, president of CWA Local 1171, which represents agents in the New England and New York areas.

 It now takes 15-20 minutes to process each passenger because of the security checks; it used to take just about five minutes. Everything is checked by us and checked by TSA and that means big backups," he said. "Normally, there are just 20 people on duty to process 3,000 customers in two hours. The stress goes right to our members, who are working as hard and as fast as they can and are missing breaks they should be taking," Hanson said.

Agents suffer ergonomic problems as well, such as injuries from lifting passengers' bags that are excessively heavy. US Airways doesn't have a baggage slide so "agents are required to pick up each bag — some weighing 70 pounds or more — turn around, twist and deposit it on the bag conveyor. Imagine doing this about 150 times over an eight hour shift," Hanson said.

For reservations agents, long stressful hours at computers can cause repetitive motion injuries. CWA meets with top managers regularly to work through these issues, and CWA also was involved in the setting of new, better-designed work stations for reservations agents, which continue to be installed at the Winston-Salem location.