Sara Nelson was elected president of the Association of Flight Attendants/CWA in 2014, the position she held at the time of this interview. The AFA joined CWA in 2003, and together with CWA’s representation of customer service workers at American and other airlines, CWA now represents more than 75,000 aviation employees. Nelson has been a union Flight Attendant since 1996 when she started flying at United Airlines. During her tenure, Nelson negotiated many pathbreaking contracts and successfully moved federal legislation to improve job security, compensation, and a healthy and safe work environment for her members. During the Covid-19 pandemic that grounded airline travel, she played a key role in passage of a $54 billion congressional Covid relief package that provided pay, health care, and other benefits to aviation workers and saved the industry from collapse.
All sound recordings, transcriptions, texts, and images from the CWA Oral History Project Web site are protected under United States Copyright Law, Title 17, U.S. Code. Fair use under such Copyright Law permits reproduction of single copies of selected items for personal research and private use. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation (such as public display, publication, or performance) of protected items is prohibited except upon receipt of written permission which can be requested by filling out the form located here.
When quoting material from this website please reference “CWA Oral History Project (https://cwa.org/oral-history)