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Flight and Teacher Unions: Masks for Thee, No Vaccine Mandates for We

By Steve Miller

Flight attendants’ and teachers’ unions whose members are on the front lines of disputed Covid safety protocols are ardent enforcers of mask mandates for the public but do not require their members to get vaccinated. Such inoculation is widely acknowledged as the most effective measure in stopping the spread of the highly infectious new Delta variant, while masking is viewed as of secondary importance and many are highly skeptical of its effectiveness and critical of its inconvenience.

As the Association of Flight Attendants continues to urge federal authorities to allow flight attendants to police passengers for masking—a policy that has led to fisticuffs on some flights—the union has struck an agreement with at least one airline, United, to allow unvaccinated members to fly. American Airlines and Southwest Air say they also do not require their flight attendants or other employees to vaccinate. Flight attendants for both airlines are unionized. Other airlines did not respond to inquiries.

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers has refrained from demanding that its members be vaccinated, but it insists on masks for the nation’s mostly unvaccinated schoolchildren despite their low vulnerability to infection. The union also pushes for hazard pay and generous sick leave for teachers.

With President Randi Weingarten of the AFT, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, praising recent Centers for Disease Control guidance requiring unvaccinated students to mask up, some districts are imposing mask requirements for students regardless of vaccine status—Philadelphia and Detroit public schools among them. The state of California is also imposing the requirement. Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union is demanding that 80 percent of students be vaccinated before teachers return to the classroom. AFT affiliates represent teachers in all of those cities as well as parts of California.

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