Flight attendants president asks for help in tough campaign at Delta

You can always spot a teacher's kid. They get it.

"I feel very at home in this room," Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told delegates on Saturday afternoon.

Nelson's mother was a teacher-and while Nelson's own career wound up taking her in a different direction, she began her working life as a teacher. In her remarks, Nelson offered a pledge of solidarity with the AFT, and asked for our support in return as the AFA-CWA fights to organize 31,000 flight attendants at Delta Air Lines. (Want to help? Visit the customized landing page that the AFA has set up especially for AFT-ers.)

Nelson is all-in for the AFT in our own fights. She deplored the conditions too many educators work under. She also struck a note of deep solidarity with AFT values: "Education is a foundation of democracy, and healthcare is a human right." Noting that she has a transgender child, she deplored extremists' cruelty and divisiveness on gender issues: "They're trying to dehumanize us. They're trying to have us believe that other people are not like us."

She added, "We're all gonna make sure the fast fascists are bound to lose."

The organizing campaign at Delta is historic-one of the largest groups of workers to seek union representation in recent years. It's been a tough road. They began their union campaign in November 2022. This June, 172 members of Congress sent a letter demanding that Delta cease interference with flight attendant organizing: "We have continued to receive troubling reports … of ongoing union-busting tactics and retaliatory actions against workers exercising their right to seek representation with a union." To show your solidarity, click here.

[Christina Bartolomeo/Photo credit: Suzannah Hoover]