Sara Nelson wants to break the AFL-CIO out of its male-dominated, blue-collar rut and return the labor movement to its activist roots
in Washington this past summer, Sara Nelson was in her element, waiting to speak to a revved-up crowd of union members at Reagan National Airport. Dressed in a navy flight attendants’ uniform, she stood out against the sea of jewel-toned business suits and union T-shirts.
“She has come from — I don’t want to say nowhere — she has come from not being very well known to being a star in the labor movement,” Brown said in an interview later. “She’s just so good. She captures the crowd and you don’t want to speak after somebody like that.” “She’s the closest thing to kind of a charismatic labor leader we’ve had since, you know, maybe Cesar Chavez,” said Peter Dreier, a union historian at Occidental College.
Nelson does not fit the classic profile of an American labor leader, at least not the cigar-chomping, pugnacious image enshrined in the public consciousness by the likes ofand Jimmy Hoffa. Nelson, with her signature platinum blond hair, favors silk scarves, though she swears like a sailor. She grew up as a Christian Scientist, abstaining from medical treatment until her late 20s, but now advocates universal health care.
“If you want to lead the labor movement, you have to think bigger,” Nelson told me in an interview earlier this summer at an upscale restaurant in downtown Washington. Relentlessly on message, she hardly touched her salmon and kale salad as she deftly avoided sounding eager to replace an incumbent who hasn’t retired yet.
As she began to cry, a stranger tapped her on the shoulder. It was a fellow flight attendant who wrote her a check for $800 on the spot. “Most flight attendants thought we just had to deal with [sexual harassment]. And we dealt with it by going internal, by building our union … to gain respect for our roles.”“It wouldn’t have even crossed your mind to complain about any sexual advances by anyone—by passengers, by pilots, by anyone in the office,” Nelson said. “Most flight attendants thought we just had to deal with it.
Nelson was off on Sept. 11, 2001, and had planned to spend the day doing union work. At 9:03 a.m., one of her usual flights to Los Angeles, United 175, collided with the south tower of the World Trade Center. She knew the entire crew, as well as two customer service representatives who were going on vacation. The experience crystallized Nelson’s view of flight attendants as essential guardians of public safety.
Nelson objected fiercely, arguing that the new bargaining unit should be represented by AFA. It was an outlandish proposition, according to several people involved in the talks, given that the American union outnumbered the U.S. Airways flight attendants 2 to 1 and easily would have won a representation election.
When I asked Nelson about this, she said other people put her up to it because Shook passed up an opportunity to get a better deal for the union. The AFA contract was better than the American Airlines union’s contract, Nelson The former board member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, corroborated Nelson’s account, saying the board had “lost confidence” in Shook’s leadership.“It would be very disingenuous for them to say that their contract was better,” said Lenny Aurigemma, one of the negotiators for the American Airlines union. “We felt we got the best of both contracts. … They never made the money that we’re making now. Never, not even close.
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