PAGE 2 | December 16, 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NORTHWEST
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Flight Attendants union led by Oregon-raised Sara Nelson
too old, if you got too fat, if you were not
the right color or gender. And all of those is-
sues were pushed back on by the union. So
flight attendants identify with the Associa-
tion of Flight Attendants because it’s the
union that formed the career. It wasn’t the
airlines. It wasn’t the companies. And as I
learned about our union and the democratic
process that the founders of our union set
up, I fell more and more in love with it. I
was very proud of the fact that I was a mem-
ber of a union that celebrated dissidence,
and was willing to listen and learn and grow
from that.
Sara Nelson – the leader of America’s largest
flight attendant union – grew up in Oregon. Her
father was a lumber mill worker. Her mother
was a teacher. Nelson, a proud graduate of Cor-
vallis High School, went to work as a flight at-
tendant at United Airlines in 1996, based out of
Boston. Today she’s president of 50,000-mem-
ber Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), a di-
vision of CWA, AFL-CIO. The Labor Press inter-
viewed her by phone Nov. 16.
Not every union-represented flight atten-
dant gets involved in their union. Why
did you get involved? It was six weeks into
working at United and I hadn’t gotten my
first paycheck. So I went into the company
office and asked if they could help. And the
response was … “I’m sure you’ll get one
next time.” Somehow I made it through the
next two weeks, but at the end of two
weeks, I didn’t get a paycheck again. I went
back to the office and asked someone to
help me, and I started to get the same rheto-
ric. All of a sudden I had this tap on the
shoulder. I turn around and there was some-
one standing there who looked just like me.
She was wearing the same uniform and she
was asking me how to spell my name. She
handed me a check for $800, and she said,
“Number 1, you go take care of yourself,
and Number 2, call our union.” I did call our
union, and I had my paycheck the very next
day. But I always tell everyone that I learned
everything I needed to know about our
union in that moment. What I learned that
day with that fellow union member who
stood up for me was that you have to have
an advocate. You cannot stand there alone.
When I called the union office, they asked
me if I would be willing to do some work. I
had no idea that people said no. I was so
honored that they would ask me to do some-
thing. That was the hook. When you get in-
volved in something and you see that it’s not
operating at its full potential, for me that was
about jumping in and making it even better.
That’s what flight attendants had done for
70 years. It used to be that you had to quit if
you got married. You had to quit if you got
Do you encourage people to fly unionized
airlines? I really appreciate that some of
your readers might be willing to choose
union carriers, and the good news is that we
in the airline industry are a highly unionized
workforce. In the Pacific Northwest, flying
on Alaska Airlines is great. They’re a great
airline and they have been proud members
of our union for over 60 years. And they
have won incredible battles at work, includ-
ing being the most progressive on maternity
leave and the ability to have safe and clean
space for lactation at work. United Airlines
as well. And Virgin America is in the mid-
dle of a merger with Alaska; they will soon
be AFA members.
On the other side, are there airlines that
you choose not to fly because of their at-
titude toward the workers or the union?
Yes: Delta Airlines and JetBlue are
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