Chantel Rodriguez

Staff Writer

Cvr5570@psu.edu 

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised the isolation requirements for individuals who test positive for Covid or have had close contact, Delta airline attendants question the risk for workers and travelers going back to work.

The CDC recommends that a ten-day quarantine is no longer necessary, and has stated that a five-day timeline is enough, especially if the individual is asymptomatic and can go back to work and wear masks around other people for the following five days. The CDC is clear in stating that the reasoning for reducing the quarantine period is to decrease the uncertainty and confusion with businesses and school closures happening globally while cases of the Omicron variant increase. 

Delta Air Lines CEO, Ed Bastian, noted in a letter to CDC director Rochelle Walensky how disruptive the ten-day quarantine timeline was to his business in considering “Delta’s staffing and operations.” This is where the disagreement and frustration come into play, mainly from the Association of Flight Attendants, or the AFA.  

Sara Nelson, president of AFA, expressed in response to Delta’s immediate changes to policies that the reasons for these new changes of reducing the quarantine period can only benefit business owners to put the needs of staffing over the employees’ health. Nelson also felt strongly that the CDC reasons felt more aligned to corporate America. I couldn’t agree more with her statements and thought process on this issue. 

The fact of knowing that many businesses now can disregard the health and well-being of their employees without the real consideration of the high risks is entirely bothersome. The five-day quarantine period only works if the mask is worn for the rest of the five days of that timeline, which all falls on trusting that individual to fulfill that. We can only hope that they succeed in that. 

For most people who may not have the symptoms after the five-day quarantine but still feel too unwell to return to work, what will happen to them? Will their shifts not be covered, will they have to use their own leave time and not be reimbursed for those days, or will they start to lose their jobs because they don’t feel safe returning to work? I can only empathize with how many thoughts and scenarios must be running through their head. 

There are so many outcomes that can come from a mandate like this, causing issues between CEOs and their workers who are out on the frontlines of the pandemic in the sense of being in the air with hundreds of people. At any moment, anything can happen, such as altercations, disputes between flight attendants and travelers/traveler versus traveler, or a medical problem. We have all seen the way they are treated on social media. To me, it’s clear that the flight attendants deserve a little more respect than they are receiving from the Delta Air Lines CEO. A little more sympathy, empathy, consideration, and putting themselves in the shoes of the flight attendants and other airline staff would help. The flight attendants and others standing against Delta changing their policies from a 10-day to 5-day quarantine only want to protect themselves, their families, co-workers, and the main one, the customers of Delta. Safety is AFA’s number one priority through all of this.