What It Actually Feels Like to Work for Free

Imagine clocking in for a nine-hour workday. You put on your uniform. You travel to the gate. You board the aircraft ahead of passengers, run through your safety checks, smile when they board, handle the anxious ones, calm the angry ones, hand out water to people sitting on a delayed plane going nowhere. You do all of that for United Airlines. Then at the end of the day you open your paycheck and it covers three hours.

That is not a hypothetical. That is what Carl-Leslie Senosier-Messan says happened to him on May 9, 2024, according to the complaint filed in this lawsuit. Six of his nine hours that day were compensated at $2.20 per hour. Denver’s minimum wage at the time of filing was $18.29 per hour. United paid him roughly twelve cents on every dollar he was legally owed for that time.

Katie Harrison spent years in this system. After transferring to United’s Denver base in May 2022, she estimates she absorbed 28 unpaid or sub-minimum-wage hours every single week until she left the job in March 2023. That is not a rounding error. That is more than half a standard full-time workweek, every week, handed over to a company that generated billions in revenue, for nothing above $2.20 an hour.

The policy operates invisibly because it is dressed up in industry language. “Flying hours” sounds like a neutral, technical term. It is not. It is a contractual fiction that erases the work a person does before passengers board, after they deplane, while delays stretch into hours, and while workers are stranded between gates at one of the country’s largest airports. The clock starts when the plane moves. Everything else, your presence, your uniform, your compliance, your labor, your professionalism, does not count.

Flight attendants are not permitted to leave. They are not free to run errands or rest. They are required to be in uniform, required to follow every United policy, required to be available to passengers, and subject to discipline if they deviate from any of it. The law in Colorado has a specific term for time you spend under an employer’s control at a prescribed workplace: “time worked.” United Airlines disagrees. United Airlines has apparently disagreed since at least May 13, 2018, which is the earliest date the class action covers.

What does six years of this feel like for a workforce? It feels like every day starting with a debt you cannot articulate because the system makes it seem normal. It feels like coworkers warning each other about delays, because a four-hour tarmac sit means four more hours at $2.20. It feels like doing the math in your head and deciding whether you can make rent. It feels like the company knowing the math too, and doing nothing about it.

“On Wednesday May 9, 2024, Senosier-Messan worked nine hours for United, but was only paid for three hours, $32.59, plus $2.20 per hour for the other six hours that he worked.”

The $2.00-per-hour per diem United offers for non-flying time is the tell. A company that genuinely believed this time was not compensable work would not offer anything at all. The per diem is an acknowledgment, buried in the fine print of an industry custom, that the time exists and that workers need something for it. The amount offered, roughly eleven percent of the Denver minimum wage, suggests United made a calculation about how little it could pay before people pushed back hard enough to sue. Someone pushed back.

What the Court Documents Actually Say

The following passages are taken verbatim from the complaint filed by HKM Employment Attorneys LLP on behalf of plaintiffs Katie Harrison and Carl-Leslie Senosier-Messan (Case No. 2024CV31089, filed May 21, 2024). Nothing below is paraphrased.

“At all times during the Relevant Period, United had a uniform policy of paying Class Members wages for only their ‘flying hours,’ i.e., the time between the pilots’ release of the break at the beginning of a flight and the plane coming to the stop at the end of the flight (‘Flying Hours Policy’). United did not pay Class Members wages, or even the applicable minimum wage rates, for the other hours they spent on duty and/or at their prescribed workplaces within the State of Colorado.”

Complaint ¶ 3, Case No. 2024CV31089

• This paragraph establishes that the policy is company-wide and uniform, applying to all flight attendants in Colorado, not isolated incidents or individual manager decisions. United designed this system deliberately.
• The phrase “or even the applicable minimum wage rates” is critical. It means United did not meet the floor, the legal minimum every Colorado employer must pay. This is not a dispute about overtime rates or premium pay. It is an allegation of sub-minimum-wage compensation.

“On Wednesday May 9, 2024, Senosier-Messan worked nine hours for United, but was only paid for three hours, $32.59, plus $2.20 per hour for the other six hours that he worked.”

Complaint ¶ 29, Case No. 2024CV31089

• This is not an estimate or an approximation. This is a specific, dated, documented workday presented as exhibit-level evidence. It provides plaintiffs’ counsel with a concrete, verifiable data point to anchor the class’s broader wage claims.
• Senosier-Messan’s contractual rate is $32.59 per hour. The $2.20 per hour he received for six hours of on-duty, uniformed work represents 6.7% of his agreed wage and 12% of Denver’s minimum wage of $18.29 per hour at the time of filing.

“At all times relevant to this Complaint, United knew, or through the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known, that its Flying Hours Policy violated Colorado Wage and Hour Law. As such, the Defendant’s violations were willful as a matter of law.”

Complaint ¶ 5, Case No. 2024CV31089

• A willful violation under Colorado law is not just worse morally. It is worse financially for the employer. Under C.R.S. § 8-4-109(3)(b), a willful finding entitles affected workers to quadruple damages, not the treble damages available for non-willful violations. Plaintiffs are arguing United’s exposure is four times every unpaid hour, for every worker, going back to May 2018.
• The “knew or should have known” standard used in Colorado (drawn from Mumby v. Pure Energy Servs., 636 F.3d 1266) means United cannot escape willfulness merely by claiming ignorance. An airline with legal counsel, a human resources department, and operations in multiple states is presumed to be aware of state wage laws in the states where it employs workers.

“During these unpaid, non-flying work hours, the Plaintiffs and the other Class Members were required to be in uniform, and to abide by the policies, practices, and procedures of United… [and] were subject to discipline if/when they were accused of violating United’s policies and practices during the non-flying work hours.”

Complaint ¶¶ 25–27, Case No. 2024CV31089

• This is the legal heart of the complaint. Under Colorado’s COMPS Order (7 C.C.R. 1103-1, Rule 1.9), requiring employees to be on premises, on duty, or at a prescribed workplace constitutes “time worked” that must be compensated. Requiring a uniform and disciplining for policy violations during that time removes any argument that workers were “completely relieved from duty.”
• The discipline element is especially significant. You cannot threaten an employee with consequences for their behavior during a period of time and simultaneously argue that period is not your work time. Colorado courts have consistently treated control over worker conduct as the defining test for compensable time.

“The unpaid non-flying work hours belonged to, and were controlled by United. The Plaintiffs and the other Class Members were not at liberty to utilize these hours for their own purposes.”

Complaint ¶ 28, Case No. 2024CV31089

• This sentence directly invokes the legal standard. Colorado law draws a sharp line between time the employer controls and time the employee can use freely. The complaint argues the flight attendants had no free time during the unpaid hours, making those hours compensable by definition.
• This also neutralizes any potential defense that workers could have been doing personal activities during boarding, deplaning, or delay periods. The complaint preemptively documents that they were in uniform, at a prescribed location, performing work duties, and subject to discipline. That is not personal time by any legal definition.

Who Gets Hurt and How the Damage Spreads

Public Health

Wage theft at scale does specific, documented damage to the bodies and lives of working people. The flight attendants affected by this policy were not victims of an abstraction.

• Harrison worked at United for over eight years, including at least ten months at the Denver base where she averaged 28 unpaid hours per week. Sustained unpaid overwork of that magnitude, compounding financial stress with physically demanding labor, is a documented driver of chronic stress, sleep disruption, and burnout. Flight attendant work involves irregular schedules, time zone crossings, and physical demands; unpaid labor compounds all of these.
• Flight attendants on delayed flights were required to remain on board, in uniform, providing passenger services including water distribution, without wages. Extended delays on tarmacs, which federal data show affect hundreds of thousands of passengers annually at major hubs like Denver, mean flight attendants can work hours of unpaid on-duty time in a single shift during bad weather or operational disruptions.
• The $2.20 per hour paid for non-flying time creates direct financial health consequences. Senosier-Messan’s documented $13.20 take-home for six hours of on-duty work represents the kind of income gap that, accumulated week over week, forces workers to take on secondary employment, reduce medical care, or defer basic expenses. These are not hypothetical harms; they are the predictable arithmetic of sub-minimum wage pay.

Economic Inequality

The structural mechanics of the Flying Hours Policy function as an upward wealth transfer from labor to capital, executed through a pay definition so narrow it excludes most of what a flight attendant actually does.

• Hundreds of flight attendants worked at Denver International Airport between May 2018 and the present. Even at a conservative estimate of 8 unpaid hours per week per worker (the low end of Senosier-Messan’s own estimate), the aggregate unpaid wages across a class of “hundreds” of workers over six years represent millions of dollars that remained with United Airlines instead of circulating in Denver’s economy through worker spending.
• United Airlines had a principal office at 233 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois, and is incorporated in Delaware. Wages diverted from Colorado workers through this policy did not stay in Colorado. They consolidated in a corporate structure headquartered thousands of miles from the workers who generated them.
• The legal structure of the “Flying Hours Policy” disproportionately punishes workers on the low end of United’s seniority scale. Harrison’s final rate was $48.98 per hour; Senosier-Messan’s current rate is $32.59. Newer, lower-paid workers absorb the same raw number of unpaid hours, but those hours represent a larger fraction of their total possible earnings, widening inequality within the workforce itself.
• The $2.00 per diem structure creates a ceiling on what flight attendants can claim as compensation for non-flying time, even when they are actively working. This is a formalized suppression of compensation that United encoded as policy, not a gap that slipped through. That structural intentionality is precisely why the complaint argues willfulness, and why the legal remedy escalates to quadruple damages.
• Colorado’s minimum wage in Denver was set at $18.29 per hour to reflect the actual cost of living in the city. A per diem of $2.00 to $2.20 per hour for mandatory, controlled, uniformed work represents a 88% shortfall against the legal floor. For a worker with a family to support, that shortfall is the difference between stability and crisis.

The Arithmetic of a Single Day

Who Is Accountable and What You Can Do About It

United Airlines, Inc. is the named defendant. The following individuals hold roles with direct governance authority over the employment practices at issue in this lawsuit.

• Chief Executive Officer of United Airlines, Inc. (principal office: 233 S. Wacker Drive, WHQCT – 14th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606): The company’s pay policy is a corporate-wide decision made at the executive level, not an isolated management error.
• Chief Human Resources Officer, United Airlines, Inc.: Wage and hour compliance is a core human resources function. The Flying Hours Policy applies uniformly to all Colorado-based flight attendants. That uniformity requires central HR authorization.
• General Counsel, United Airlines, Inc.: The complaint specifically alleges United “knew or through the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known” the policy violated Colorado law. Legal counsel is the function responsible for that diligence.
• Board of Directors, United Airlines Holdings, Inc.: Executive compensation decisions are made by the board. Simultaneously maintaining a sub-minimum-wage policy for hourly workers while approving executive pay is a governance choice boards are directly responsible for.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies

• Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE), Division of Labor Standards and Statistics: The primary state agency responsible for enforcing Colorado Wage and Hour Law, including the CWA and COMPS Order. Workers who believe they are owed wages can file a complaint at cdle.colorado.gov.
• U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Wage and Hour Division: Federal wage enforcement applies in aviation contexts. The DOL also collects data on airline labor practices that can inform future regulatory action.
• Colorado Attorney General’s Office: The AG has authority to pursue wage theft cases on behalf of workers statewide, including class-wide actions when individual recovery is impractical.
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): While the FAA does not regulate wages, flight attendant work-hour rules intersect with safety requirements. Unpaid mandatory work time that exhausts workers before flights is a safety concern, not just a labor concern.

Mutual Aid and Grassroots Resistance

• If you are a current or former United Airlines flight attendant who was based in Colorado at any point between May 13, 2018 and now, you may be a class member. Contact HKM Employment Attorneys LLP at (720) 255-0370 or by email at aharrison@hkm.com or csanchez@hkm.com to understand your rights before any statute of limitations expires.
• Document your hours now. If you are currently employed as a flight attendant at any carrier that uses a flying-hours-only pay structure, begin keeping personal records of your arrival time, departure time, time between planes, and delay duration. These personal records become evidence if litigation follows.
• Connect with the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA), the primary flight attendant union in the United States, to understand what your collective bargaining agreement covers and, critically, what it does not cover relative to state wage law. The Barlow v. Westin DEN Operator precedent cited in this complaint confirms that Colorado wage law cannot be waived by a union contract. You have rights the CBA cannot take away.
• Share this case with coworkers in other states. Colorado’s COMPS Order is one of the most worker-protective wage laws in the country, but other states have similar minimum wage statutes. United operates nationally. The Flying Hours Policy is national. The legal exposure may extend far beyond Colorado.
• Support local worker centers in Denver. Organizations like the Colorado Workers’ Center provide support for wage theft victims who lack the resources for individual litigation, including assistance filing administrative complaints with the CDLE.