Association of Flight Attendants' Sara Nelson on United Airlines, Delta, and Kamala Harris

The union's president gave some insight into its view of the airline industry

By Melvin Backman11 min readUpdated August 6, 2024

The Association of Flight Attendants, the union representing flight attendants at United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and more, is always in the middle of a fight, whether it’s a picket or a strike or a contract negotiation. Two of the biggest fights it has going right now are trying to work out its first contract in three years at United — and working up to its first contract ever at Delta Air Lines. The union’s president, Sara Nelson, spoke to Quartz about those battles, as well as the Railway Labor Act, the latest read on the fallout from Joe Biden’s dropping out of the race for president and a few other topics in the industry.

Quartz: Going to go straight into it. How are things going at United?

Sara Nelson: Slow. The company has been dragging their feet. A year ago they proposed an expedited process to conclude the negotiations. We came back and said, Yes, let’s do it. I think that they thought that we were gonna say no or something and they are just not moving things to the table. It’s a delay tactic, and a position that they can take under the Railway Labor Act. We had to file for mediation, which is the next step under the Railway Labor Act, and we’re continuing to press forward. Now, United flight attendants are taking a strike vote.

Looking around the industry, it seems like strike votes tend to be pretty near-unanimous. Do you expect that to happen at United?

I do. The flight attendants are fired up. On top of the CrowdStrike $CRWD operational meltdown, an email was sent out in violation of the contract requiring absence certificates for uh any sick calls over the weekend. It’s a very stark representation of the disrespect that we have seen at the negotiating table. If flight attendants weren’t already fired up, that action made them crystal clear about what they need to do and what kind of message they need to send to this company.

It’s been coming up a lot lately, the limitations imposed on unions by the Railway Labor Act. Do you think the act should be amended to make it easier for unions covered by it to strike?

I think that the RLA needs to be followed. Letters went out from members of the house and members of the Senate about following the provisions of the RLA and making it very clear that workers have the right to strike. This administration did do that, and those credible strike threats are what led to agreements at Alaska [Airlines] and American [Airlines]. When the act is used as intended, which includes that right to strike, then collective bargaining works. I’m not saying that the RLA shouldn’t be amended to put in clear timelines and to make sure that we don’t have these drawn-out negotiations. But when the government actually uses the act as intended, it leads to agreements.

Looking back to the railway near-strikes a few years ago, it seemed like the unions were pretty unhappy with the deal that they were getting.

I am happy to say on the record that it was wrong and that should never happen.

Do you think that the American Airlines flight attendants might have been able to get a better deal had they been able to strike more easily or get released from the mediation process more easily?

No. The deal that the American flight attendants got is definitely the result of a credible strike threat. Now, should it have happened sooner? Could we have gotten an agreement sooner? There’s a problem with the time that this takes and how long workers have to wait for deals. But, American put significantly more on the table because they were trying to avoid a release [from mediation] and avoid a strike. The fact that the union had the members ready to strike? The letters from lawmakers and the Biden administration to back those up? I mean, we often say the best way to avoid a strike is to be fully prepared for one.

Speaking of the Biden administration, I know that the AFA considers him a great friend of labor. How is the AFA feeling about Kamala Harris?

I mean, she’s a part of that administration. She was by his side. She understands all of these issues. I think that we’re gonna have a lot more to say about that in the coming days. We have a process like a lot of unions for endorsements, and we have to go through that process. I’m not prepared to fully talk about that, but we view her support for our rights as part-and-parcel with the president.

Is there a possibility that the AFA could end up endorsing another candidate for the Democratic nomination?

I think it’s pretty clear who the candidate is. It seems pretty clear to us that Kamala Harris is going to be the candidate. By the time that we would do our process, I think that that will be abundantly clear. I don’t even think it’s really an option of considering endorsing another candidate.

What is the process like for reaching an endorsement?

Let me say this: We did not hold up an AFL-CIO endorsement of the Biden-Harris ticket. We were getting to a place where we were already starting to consider our endorsement process for the presidential election, but we had not done that yet because we needed to make sure that the administration was going to support our right to strike. That did happen, and that led to agreements at Alaska and American. We expect the same support at United. But there’s been a demonstration there, and so we were getting to a place where we were getting ready to go through our endorsement process.

And at Delta, is it possible to say how many union cards have been signed?

We don’t ever say that openly, but the Delta campaign absolutely has serious momentum — more than we’ve seen throughout the campaign. We’re, we’re feeling extremely hopeful about getting to an election.

It seems like Delta has made some concessions to its workforce in hopes of staving off a union.

Yeah, Delta always tries to make it look like they are at the top of the industry. Of course, they never are because when you take into consideration the cost on health care and and sick leave and vacation all the other pieces and rules that determine how often you’re getting that hourly rate — don’t forget, flight attendants are not paid for every hour on the job. But the organizing at Delta is critical if we want move their careers forward. Delta made more than all the other airlines combined last year. They should be leading the industry, and the flight attendants are very much recognizing that the pilots got 30-something-percent increases and they got 5. It’s always a carrot and stick and union busting. But that carrot that Delta usually uses is not having the same impact that it normally would to try to cool the organizing.

That has a lot to do with the way people are talking about unions across the country. It has a lot to do with seeing the very public campaigns, the pilots and UPS and the auto workers and the strike in Hollywood with the writers and the actors. We’ve been more united as a work group across unions, even working to push forward on these contracts and understanding very well that each of the contracts has an impact on other flight attendant workforces. So there’s a connection there that has never really been made before at Delta.

At the Delta annual meeting, there was a shareholder resolution asking that the company be neutral in the face of any organizing drives.

They’re absolutely not neutral, and they were pushing hard “no” vote against that resolution.

There was less support for the resolution this year than for a similar one last year. What do you think that says about the kind of fight that the AFA is in for when things come to a head?

The shareholder resolution has nothing to do with it because Delta has always said they’re, they’ll spend $1 more than it takes to keep the union off the property. They have been doing that since the 1940s and it is uh it is uh a part of their culture, it is woven into everything that they do. The shareholder proposal was one more example of that. It just shows the flight attendants that it’s not going to change the way that Delta behaves at all. They’re gonna continue to union-bust, they’re gonna continue to be wholly committed to that. But it shows the flight attendants and the public that when Delta says that they respect their employees rights, that they’re lying.

Delta recently changed its flight attendant flag pin policy after a dust-up about flight attendants who wore Palestinian flags. Now the company says they can only wear American flags. What. do you think about that?

Yeah, so to be clear, this is a longstanding practice. This isn’t like people chose to put on Palestinian flags because of what’s going on in the world. This is a longstanding practice that flight attendants wear a flag pin that represents their heritage. It could be an Irish pin, an Italian pin. The issue initially was that there were pictures taken of flight attendants without their consent and put out on the internet and promoted in a way that doxxed these flight attendants. Their family members were threatened, and instead of protecting those flight attendants and taking care of those flight attendants, Delta bowed to haters to change their pin policy.

People want to frame this as though it’s about the current events surrounding the very high-tension issues around what’s happening in Israel and Gaza.That’s not really what this is. This is Delta walking away from decades of celebrating diversity and a representation of how we connect people around the world, walking away from even taking care of the safety of their own employees. It shows that that’s exactly why Delta flight attendants need a union, because the company is always going to bow to whatever economic pressure, to what’s politically expedient, as opposed to actually lifting up and truly promoting the rights and dignity of each person who works at Delta and flies on Delta.

Has it come up a lot in organizing talks?

Yes. People are very concerned about that. They’re very concerned that the airline, after celebrating all this for years and saying that it was central to the principals of the airline, would just walk away from that and not take steps to protect their employees.

What do you think is the biggest issue facing flight attendants today?

Our jobs are harder than they’ve ever been. We are at minimum staffing. The number of responsibilities that we have has only increased: We respond to medical emergencies, we have fires on board, we have decompressions, we have security threats that we have to look out for. And we also have full aircraft. After the mergers that followed on from the bankruptcies after 9/11, that took capacity out of the industry, which meant that we were flying with higher loads — and that has only increased since the pandemic. And then we also have all this political rhetoric, an increase in disruptive passengers and unrest and difficulty every day with the escalating conflict on board.

What that has led to, then, is an even greater insistence on getting paid for our time at work. Because when those non-flight hours are being worked, uh flight attendants are not directly getting, um, an hourly rate for that. And that’s why we’ve pushed for boarding pay. That’s why you’ve seen boarding pay come out of both the Alaska and the American agreements. We’re pushing more for getting paid for every hour that we’re on the job. Those hours that are not just in the air or away from the gate are some of the hardest work that we do all day long.

There’s been a bit of chatter among different airlines coming out of earnings season that they’re expecting business to get a little softer in the near future. What effect do you think that’s going to have on negotiations going forward at, say, United or negotiations to take place in the future at, say, Delta?

Look. Delta is still doing just fine. We need to get the union on the property and get to the table. The airline industry has always gone through cycles of ups and downs. It’s important. This is why the United flight attendants are demanding a contract right now. They can’t wait. I don’t think that it will change the demands of the table at United, but it’s also why the flight attendants are demanding that this get done now.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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