Alitalia Prepping To Strike Over…Toilet Paper?

Alitalia is finding themselves strapped for cash these days, and have begun to ask their crews to get a little more personal with their passengers and clean the lavatories on long-haul flights. The idea of taking on additional duties (pun intended) went over like a lead balloon. Cabin crew plan to strike February 23rd to protest that proposal along with planned pay cuts and schedule changes.

Reports have been unclear as to what is really being asked of the Pope’s airline of choice, and it is also uncertain as to why the long-haul crews are pitching a fit when their shorter-haul counterparts are already expected to tidy the loos midflight. Originally, it was made to seem that the crews would be scrubbing the toilet bowls after arrival, but now it seems that what is being asked is that they top off towels and soap, as well as make sure the lavatories are generally kept up en route to their destinations.

I work full-time and I also travel for leisure very frequently. I know these toilets can get wretched. But I know that I can either tidy a small problem here and there, or have a massive problem and an unusable lavatory later. It is required of me at my airline to make sure that the passengers have a decently clean lavatory, and I would be shocked if other airlines didn’t require their crews to do the same. Since we do not include an in-flight janitor as part of the crew, and I have pride in my airline and am unwilling to fly in squalor, I will straighten up the restrooms. There are absolutely lines I won’t cross and will lock off the lavatory should it get to a certain state, but I really can’t imagine that Alitalia is debating that point.

The general rule with airlines is that we have to periodically check what is going on in all the lavatories from time to time – both for security reasons as well as cleanliness. And while some (okay, many) will pretend they never saw a mess in there and leave it for a coworker to find, usually at some point someone on the crew will at least make a pathetic attempt to clean up. Some of us go even further and will disinfect the whole thing, mostly for selfish reasons. And this is why the best time to go to the restroom during a flight is after a flight attendant has used it. But sometimes if a particularly bad route – usually one involving third-world countries where bathroom habits are a bit different than we are used to – sometimes the crew will lock one lavatory off and secretly declare it the “crew restroom.” (This, of course, is not really allowed.) So, I get that it isn’t a glamorous job. But it is our job…within reason.

Boeing has developed a self-cleaning lavatory which uses UV light to kill germs while the lavatory is unoccupied and employ mostly hands-free features. Hopefully we will see this soon, but it will be not soon enough to provide solace to Alitalia crews who are seemingly not looking forward to sprucing them up in the interim.

It’s unclear who Alitalia crews are expecting to replace paper towels and wipe the odd sink basin during long-haul international flights, but it kind of doesn’t make me want to fly an airline who finds replacing toilet paper rolls to be excessive work. How do you say “Depends” in Italian?