Not at all dump. A good question... . I was actually wondering the same thing
Anyway, back to being serious. As far as I know, some of the individual FA that are high, high, high in the seniority scale, actually earn quite a nice salary. I don't know if anyone knows approximate figures, but I am sure it is quite hefty.
At jetblue a friend of mine earns $6 an hour plus benefits (or something around that area).
When you click on one of the links, you can see that in the summary of the demands, one of the demands i that they should get rid of the 3-hour training pay. This means that if you earn less than 3 hours, you will get paid for the amount of time you worked. I am guessing that UA may have had many individuals who have had training sessions for half an hour, but still got paid for the full three hours (please correct me if I am wrong).
Something was also said with regards to vacation. United wants to cut the amount of vacation FA's have, but if you think about it, being able to fly all around the world is one of the most exciting perks of this job. And it is not like the FA's fly back three hours after they arrive in NRT from SFO - they have at least two days to explore the city and a new culture!
In addition, considering that each flight attendant only has to rack up a certain number of hours, all of the FA's who fly the long-haul routes, only have to fly a couple a month and can do whatever they want for the rest of their time - I have actually met a FA who was doing his graduate program at the same time!
Here is a summary of United's demands from the AFA website:
http://www.unitedafa.org/res/b/res/2_demand_sum.asp