Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants - CWA, AFL-CIO
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE

Most Powerful Women 2022 - Aiming For The Sky: Leading Societal Change

Aiming For The Sky: Leading Societal Change

just about all of us flew here to attend the summit and it's so great to be flying again. But as we're all aware flying these days it's not always as easy as it once was. There's still some challenges that remain after the upheaval caused by the pandemic. Perhaps no one feels those challenges as much as the flight attendants on board the planes under pressure like never before layoffs furloughs in the early days of the pandemic and then an uptick and threats from unruly passengers. Sara nelson is the international president of the largest flight attendants union, the A. F. A. She's a veteran flight attendant herself with 26 years in the sky and a vocal champion of workers rights. She's been called America's most powerful flight attendant and was instrumental in saving the airline industry from shutting down. In the early days of the covid crisis. Sarah joins us now for a conversation with fortune, senior writer and M. P. W. Senate co chair Emma Hinchliffe, please welcome them to the stage. Hey Sarah, good morning, Thank you everybody here. Yeah. So Sarah you run the largest flight attendants union in the country. You have 50,000 members were in a room full of ceo what are some misconceptions you think this room might have about modern day unions? Well I think first of all um unions were formed mostly in the 1930s after passing labor law and after a lot of upheaval, a lot of instability. Um corporations actually wanted that labor law at the time because there was so much instability and um so that was put into place that was eroded then with taft hartley. And um what I would say too though is that at the time there was also a lot of racism and sexism um woven into that labor law woven into the labor movement. There were unions who stood up against um racism, not against sexism. Um and um and and at the we're at the forefront of the civil rights movement, the march on Washington with Dr king was arm in arm with walter routers, president of the U. A. W. United Auto Workers. And um that was a march for jobs and freedom. And so unions were really about setting a standard in the country um which created really this this pact that if you did good work um and spend your life doing that, that you could have a living wage, you could have education for your Children, secure retirement and health care and that has really been eroded, productivity has been driven through the roof. People are very angry, they're having to work two and three jobs just to get by. Um I think the biggest misconception is that unions are going to be disruptive to the property when in fact, I have a lot of stories about unions making it possible for an industry to survive. Yeah. Well how so, I mean, it sounds like based on what I just said that might have happened in your own industry over the past two years. Yeah, so um we we worked really hard. Our union was never really taken seriously. My first day on the job, a flight attendant pulled me aside and she said, listen, management thinks of us as their wives or their mistresses, and in either case they hold us in contempt. Your only place of worth is with your fellow flying partners. And if we stick together, there's nothing we can't accomplish. And I have to say, as a union leader, that's when I really learned, um, that sexism was serious and existed and um, that women have to be in the room. And we fought every which way to do that. We had to fight back against all kinds of discrimination, stepping on a weight scale even until 1993 when I started, I was required to go to makeup class and we're two inch heels, you couldn't be married, uh, you couldn't, you couldn't weigh over £15 100 £15. Um, and you couldn't get pregnant, you couldn't have these jobs. So we had to fight through all that discrimination just to get to the bargaining table to try to then make a good career when the me Too movement broke. Um, it gave us an opportunity to push forward because we never expected that anyone would make any space for us. We always fought for that space, even taking on big tobacco and getting it out of our work space. Um, but we made the most of the moment. We called on the industry to denounce it sexist past, um, to lift up flight attendants, safety professionals, and to call out a zero tolerance policy against any sexual harassment or assault in our workplace. And that led. And still, we don't have a woman as a ceo in the airline industry, but we're getting there. Um But we but we used that standing then to be very clear about the government shutdown, that our workspace was increasingly unsafe. We worked With the industry to define the very real safety concerns, and we said that we were going to strike if that government shutdown continued. And it wasn't until we actually took that action that there was a resolution. Um, and the government was reopened. Um, people were safer getting their paychecks again. And that gave us the power then a year later, um the industry reached out to me when we were in crisis. Uh the airlines were together in a room talking about the fact that demand had dropped off 97%. Uh They're in their trade association, they're not really supposed to be talking about their businesses, but they're like, they finally, the silence broke and they realized, um the airlines were going to completely crumble go out of business. Um There was no way that cash heavy business, they would be able to even meet payroll, some of them within a couple of weeks. Um let alone a couple of months. And so they called me and we had a plan based on our experience from 9 11 and the crisis that happened then, um, and the insufficient response, frankly from the government. And, uh, we had a plan that was workers first, and I said to them, I said, listen, the public hates you, you are the example of inequality when people get on the planes and people are really mad about this. There's no way that you're going to get any money. But if we make this workers first, we get grants from the government to keep people and they're connected to their jobs, uh, connected to their paycheck, then that connected pensions, um, paying into the public, paying local taxes and continuing to provide service all over the country. Um, no furloughs, no cuts in pay, then we might be able to get somewhere. And they agreed that we hammered out the details that night, and we went arm in arm with the industry to get that. It was the only industry that received that kind of support and kept workers in place so that we could, I know there's been a lot of talk about the operational disruptions, but there's a lot of other reasons for that. The airline industry would never have been able to meet the demand that was needed, as people were coming back from covid and that would have crippled the rest of the economy. So very proud of that work that we did together, and that was only possible because there was that respect, that collective bargaining relationships between unions and management. Um and we used that respect on Capitol Hill to get something done in a political environment where people thought it was impossible to get any solutions. Thank you Sarah. Yeah. Um I'm guessing we might have some questions for Sarah. Still come to the audience in a second. So keep thinking. But you know right now, we're seeing a wave of unionization across industries, across companies that have not traditionally had unions. You're wearing a Starbucks workers United pin. We have amazon. What is your advice to corporate leaders who are seeing unions emerged at their companies? I mean the advice is not to fight them. There's a whole industry of union busters who would like to tell you that it's better to fight the unions and they're gonna take your money and leave your corporation in shambles because it is going to destroy morale, It's disrespect towards the workers. Um They have a playbook that is the same every single time. If you really wanted to bust unions, you can just pull it up on the internet, don't pay those guys $3500 a day. Um But my my suggestion is to actually um have a neutrality agreement, have some peace and uh in the um in in the workspace where people can make those decisions, they can make those decisions on their own, but you've got a set of rules about how those conversations are going to take place and where they can take place. Um So that it's not disruptive and then that collective bargaining relationship frank is really important. It's important for um tackling the issue of equal pay and equal rights and women who have the ability to join together in their unions. They have that in black and white, what everyone is getting paid, they're able to negotiate on the things that um don't happen otherwise, because they have a way to bring forward the healthcare demands that we have and that we need to have in our plans, for example. Um And we also have our union has an a f a a p professional standards plan, that the um that has been recognized by the President of the United States for over 30 years, and um and what it does is it addresses issues where people are having problems, get some, get some help sooner, they get back to work sooner. It puts 18% paid back in the workers pockets who are able to use this program and guess what? Management doesn't have to have as many people handling these problems and they refer these cases to our union. We deal with that outside the workplace. There's, I could go on and on, but there's a lot of benefits to having a union on the property that is worker led people right there in the workplace. You can also talk more about the business. I talked about this the other day at Berkeley law. Um the much more likely that union members actually understand the total business and are more likely to be responsive to the needs of making changes or problem solving. And so it's a very structured way to deal with those workforce issues. And frankly, if you're negotiating and creating better pay and benefits, it's also going to attract people to those jobs so that you can actually perform the work that's needed and meet the demand that's needed. Any questions for Sarah. Okay. Finally, I would just say this is critical for our democracy because women have to have the ability to speak up and there is an absolute attack on women, our rights, our own bodily economy um and our independence. And if we want to step up and have women in places where we're leading this country where we're actually leading with pollutions because we understand how to put our anger in check. We understand um how to find creative solutions because no one made that path for us and we need leaders who are women everywhere. And if we're going to do that, we need to also make sure that women have the ability to lead unions, join unions, lead unions and view the problem. Um Sarah what made you join your union originally and pursue a path of becoming a union leader. So I grew up in Oregon. Um my mom was actually a union member, but I didn't have a consciousness of that until much later, we didn't talk about it in my house, I only knew about her, had heard about jimmy hoffa and that didn't end well, so didn't necessarily have a great idea of unions. Um I um I was going to be a high school english teacher and I was planning to start my classroom the next year in inner city, ST louis was working for jobs at the time just to try to make ends meet. And my girlfriend called me from the beach in Miami. Um She had become a flight attendant. We laughed about it at the end of our career, we knew nothing about this. Um and she's razzing me that I'm in ST louis um working my rear end off and um barely scraping by on a cold cold day. And she had her toes in the sand in Miami Beach. And she went on and and she raised me about that, but then she said no, seriously. All of our jokes aside, this job is no joke and she explained the pay, she explained the benefits, she explained the flexibility and she explained the pension that would allow you to retire at 50 and at 23, working four jobs, I was like, that sounds good. So I drove to Chicago the next day um interviewed with United Airlines and when they put me out on the line as a flight attendant, they failed to pay me. Um, and I couldn't get any help from anyone. And it was a fellow union member when I was really in crisis and out of money and not able to eat there in the office of the company with no one helping me. Who tapped me on the shoulder. I'd never seen her before, but I turned around and she's holding her checkbook, asking me how to spell my name. She handed me a check for $800 and she said, number one, you go take care of yourself and number two, you call her union. And I did call our union. I had my paycheck the next day, but I always tell everyone that I learned everything I needed to know about our union in that moment when she was in front of me because in our unions, we care about each other very much and we can make the most out of that care by being organized together. And I have to tell you then we negotiated a contract that I hated. I became a dissident. I was a real rabble rouser and people just kept asking me to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Um, and a strong sense of justice and a loud mouth will carry you really far. And finally, I would just say at five years, 9, 11 happened. And um, the uh, flight 1 75 you can picture it flying into the south tower of the World Trade Center um because all cameras were trained on it because Flight 11 had hit the north tower 17 minutes earlier. And those were my friends. That was my flight that I worked very regularly. I knew all seven flight attendants and the two customer service agents who were going on vacation together to Disneyland. And um, that changed everything. And in that crisis there were people who wanted to take advantage of taking away that pension that I drove to Chicago for um, the next day and um, taking away all the work rules that we had fought to build up and taking away pay. And I know that the people on that plane would never have stood for that. They are my heroes forever. Um, I say their names when I need strength and um, it's uh, my commitment to making sure that their life means something. Um, that keeps me going every day and make sure that everyone has a voice. Everyone has a way to take care of each other. Um, and everyone has a way to love and problem solve. Thank you so much. Sarah