Employees’ rift with Delta builds amid uniform battle

Some flight attendants think trust has been ‘completely destroyed.’

Many flight attendants blame new uniforms for reported health woes.

Skin rashes, difficulty breathing, blurry vision and hair loss.

Those are some of the issues thousands of Delta Air Lines flight attendants have reportedly dealt with since the company switched their uniforms nearly two years ago.

At first, many of the workers quietly coped — seeing doctors, visiting urgent care during their layovers and wearing a protective base layer between their skin and the uniforms. But as symptoms worsened, many say they couldn’t perform their jobs.

Eventually, the workers started talking to one another about their personal health problems and noticed striking similarities.

A year after the new uniform line launched, Delta workers filed the first class action lawsuit in a New York district court against the clothing manufacturer, Lands’ End of Dodgeville, Wis. Then, two weeks ago on New Year’s

Eve, the second class action lawsuit was filed by 536 Delta workers, including dozens from Minnesota, who provided details about the adverse health conditions they’ve experienced since donning Delta’s new threads. The vast majority of the plaintiffs are flight attendants, but several gate agents, cargo workers and Sky Club employees also have joined the suit.

As of November, about 3,000 flight attendants have formally reported adverse health effects attributed to the uniforms, Delta said.

The issue is a hot one that intersects a unionization effort of Delta flight attendants and is drawing comparisons to nearly identical situations recently experienced at American and Alaska Airlines. It also highlights a relatively new field of medicine for lower-exposure hazards in the workplace that are increasingly difficult to pinpoint and trace as the global clothing supply chain expands farther from home.

Much fanfare

In May 2018, Atlanta-based Delta threw glitzy runway shows at several of its largest hubs to promote the launch of its new

REANN HUBER/REANN.HUBER@AJC.COM Carolyn Brown, a Delta uniform fitter, sorts through clothing racks to find sizes for employees during uniform fitting at Hartsfield-Jackson in 2018. A second class action lawsuit has been filed by Delta workers who point to adverse health conditions after wearing Delta’s new uniforms.

STEVE SCHAEFER / SPECIAL TO THE AJC As of November, about 3,000 flight attendants have formally reported adverse health effects attributed to the uniforms, Delta said.