Delta Flight Attendants Take Creative Approach to Organizing

Samantha Tate of the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) describes a new video produced by Delta flight attendants to thwart management’s campaign to prevent them from forming a union. After seven years of intense outreach and worker-to-worker contacts, the 13,500 flight attendants at Delta are close to joining AFA-CWA.  

Flight attendants at Delta Air Lines, who currently are voting to join AFA-CWA, are developing creative ways to counter management’s anti-union campaign. The mail-ballot voting, which closes June 3, is going on at the same time Delta is in merger talks with Northwest to create the nation’s largest air carrier. But without key protections, employees at both companies could suffer, and last week they urged Congress to send a strong message to the carriers that the merger cannot be an excuse to bust unions or abrogate contracts.

Even though a solid majority of Delta flight attendants have signed union authorization cards, management has launched a strong campaign to prevent the workers from choosing the union. Delta’s management continues to inundate flight attendants with propaganda encouraging them not to participate in the voting process.

To get a voice in what so far has been a one-sided discussion, Delta flight attendants have come up with innovative tactics to ensure that flight attendants are not intimidated by what they say are management’s intense voter suppression efforts. This recent video, produced by a Delta flight attendant, highlights inaccurate statements over the years by past and current Delta management. One clip features Delta CEO Richard Anderson’s testimony last week before Congress, where he evaded questions about whether he would remain neutral in Delta’s flight attendants’ choice for union representation—clearly indicating that he did not intend to do so.

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