[ Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson on
abortion rights, building union density, and the sham of “corporate
benevolence”.]
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SARA NELSON: ATTACKS ON ABORTION RIGHTS ARE ATTACKS ON ALL WORKERS  
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Natascha Elena Uhlmann interviews Sara Nelson
September 4, 2023
In These Times
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_ Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson on
abortion rights, building union density, and the sham of “corporate
benevolence”. _

Sara Nelson speaks as WGA and SAG-AFTRA members picket as they strike
over contract negotiation at Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery
offices in New York on August 17, 2023., Credit: Kena
Betancur/Viewpress // In These Times

 

Over the past year, workers have seen our lives irrevocably changed.
The Supreme Court’s landmark _Dobbs_ decision gutted
a fundamental right to bodily autonomy and plunged millions into
crisis and uncertainty. Almost immediately, a litany of horror
stories emerged. Doctors denying life saving care for fear of
retribution
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women trapped with their abusers
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accessing abortion care; children — already subjected to
unspeakable violence — forced to seek the procedure in the
shadows, lest they bear children of their own.
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Since the ruling, 14 states have implemented full abortion bans, and
several others are working tirelessly to restrict access. Not content
with their unprecedented assault on reproductive autonomy, some
Republicans have moved swiftly onto their next target: birth control.
[[link removed]] It’s
abundantly clear that these assaults will continue unabated until
we’re strong enough as a movement to stop them. So, how the hell do
we get there? 

For Sara Nelson, the answer is clear: our movements need to be willing
to show up for each other like never before. The attack on abortion
rights is at its core an attack on working people
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Poor people are more than five times as likely
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face an unwanted pregnancy, and Black women in the U.S. are
almost three times more likely to die during pregnancy
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women of another race. Forced parenthood traps families into lifetimes
of poverty and trauma — and unsurprisingly, the states that have
moved most swiftly to restrict abortion rights are also those who do
the least to support new parents
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parental leave, pregnancy protections at work, and a liveable wage. 

Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA,
AFL – CIO, spoke to _In These Times_ on the fight for abortion
rights and labor’s duty to take a strong stand. This conversation
has been edited for length and clarity. 

NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN: IN THE AFTERMATH OF _DOBBS_, HOW SHOULD
UNIONS BE THINKING ABOUT ATTACKS ON ABORTION RIGHTS AND REPRODUCTIVE
JUSTICE? WHAT, TANGIBLY, CAN UNIONS DO TO PROTECT THESE RIGHTS? 

SARA NELSON: Unions fundamentally need to look at this as a part of
what the corporate elite have done for centuries, and that is divide
workers, primarily by race and sex, and go on from there. And so,
union organizers understand that when you’re organizing, you look to
leaders to try to engage them in the organizing campaign and bring
along with them a whole set of other workers. When people are on
disadvantaged ground, that’s very difficult to do. So taking half of
the population and taking away their right to self determination, and
affirming even further that they’re not equal to the rest of the
population is undercutting our values as working class and denying the
solidarity that is otherwise an option when we see an injury to one is
an injury to all. We’ve got to lift everyone up. If one person can
be marginalized or oppressed, or discriminated against, that leaves us
all open to that discrimination. 

So we need to understand that this is a fundamental attack on our
solidarity, on working class power. And the very idea that we still
haven’t broken through not only the pay gap but the sexism that
exists in the economy across the board — certain jobs have been
defined as ​“women’s work” purposefully attempting to make
the jobs less valuable. So before you even get to the issues of
economic concerns for the workers, what’s the biggest economic
decision you make in life? Whether or not to have children. So taking
that right away immediately introduces an economic harm to half of the
population, half of the working class. But before you even get to
that, it undercuts solidarity and gives the corporate elite a way,
one more way to divide the working class, to deny us of our power and
our ability to claim our share of what we create.

NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN: SHORTLY AFTER THE _DOBBS_ DECISION,
CORPORATIONS LIKE STARBUCKS, MICROSOFT, AND PAYPAL PLEDGED TO SUPPORT
THEIR EMPLOYEES IN OBTAINING AN ABORTION SHOULD THEY CHOOSE TO HAVE
ONE. [BUT AS SARAH LAZARE NOTES
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THIS HAS A DARK SIDE — IT’S OFTEN USED AS AN ANTI-UNION
CUDGEL, OR EVEN IN THE BEST CASE SCENARIO LEAVES WORKERS EVEN MORE
RELIANT ON BAD BOSSES. HOW HAVE AIRLINE CEO’S TALKED ABOUT ABORTION?
HOW DO WE AVOID HAVING OUR MOVEMENTS CO OPTED
BY ​“CORPORATE BENEVOLENCE”?

SARA NELSON: There’s a problem across the board. There’s the
problem of defining issues as political issues rather than human
rights issues. Corporations typically go with the popular ideas in
society, and it’s all based on whether or not you can use these
ideas to sell your tickets, your products. For example, we had to
fight for LGBTQ rights. We started on the job fighting for that at
United Airlines for domestic partner benefits. This last month, in
Pride Month, United Airlines’ travel magazine said United Airlines
was the first carrier to provide domestic partner benefits because
they wanted to boast their LGBTQ friendliness to sell tickets. There
was no mention of the fact that the union had to put up a massive
battle against the airline in order to win those rights. It’s only
because of the union that they existed. So when the Dobbs decision was
announced, I wrote to all of the airline management and said that for
the sake of the workers, their safety, their economic security, the
reality that air travel is a symbol of freedom…that they need to
speak up against this attack on women’s rights. And the best that
they would do is restate the policies that they have in assisting
women with travel to get medical care… It was a far cry from saying
that women in their workforce are equal to everyone else in the
workforce, and that the people that they want to sell tickets to, are
all in their eyes equal and should have equal standing. So they were,
you know, very hesitant. So there’s the issue of political
retaliation in and of itself. 

And then I would recognize that when we negotiated our very first
contract in 1946, after organizing a union in 1945, one of the
first things we had to do was negotiate a seniority list so that the
bidding of schedules was transparent, and award of work was
transparent, and managers couldn’t try to coerce flight attendants
to trade sex for schedules.

Denying the right to abortion means bosses and people in power and
coworkers can control women. It means control of a woman for her
entire life. It brings new meaning to rape. Beyond the act itself,
forcing her to be pregnant for 10 months, and then to be a mother,
before or whether or not, that’s something that she decides. So
these issues introduce more discrimination, more oppression, the
ability to shame people; in order to get any kind of care, you’ve
got to ask for help on that, explain that. And so this sets up all
kinds of ways to interfere with a worker’s privacy, and their right
to have their own self determination, because even if a company has
a ​“friendly” policy, you have a manager who has to implement
the policy, you’re putting that in the hands of someone who has been
told this is a political issue rather than a personal and human
rights issue.

When we negotiated our very first contract in 1946, after organizing a
union in 1945, one of the first things we had to do was negotiate a
seniority list so that the bidding of schedules was transparent, and
award of work was transparent, and managers couldn't try to coerce
flight attendants to trade sex for schedules.

NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN: ADVOCATING FOR SOCIAL ISSUES CAN OFTEN BRING
NEW PEOPLE INTO MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND RACIAL JUSTICE.
WE’VE SEEN IT WITH THE CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION, WHERE THEY REALLY
EXPANDED THE SCOPE OF WHAT THEY WERE FIGHTING FOR, BEYOND THE
IMMEDIATE ISSUES OF TEACHER PAY AND WORKING CONDITIONS, AND FOUGHT FOR
THE CONDITIONS THEIR STUDENTS FACE — LIKE INVESTMENTS IN
AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND RACIAL JUSTICE. IT SEEMS LIKE THIS FIGHT REALLY
GALVANIZED THE MOVEMENT. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DYNAMIC PLAY OUT IN YOUR
OWN ORGANIZING? 

SARA NELSON: Yes, generally. Not so much with Dobbs directly. But the
social issues and taking those issues on and being very intentional
about taking on social issues, and celebrating diversity has
absolutely given new life to our organizing and brought people in who
otherwise didn’t necessarily identify with the union with the based
solely on economic issues. And to be very clear, for these workers,
the social issues are fundamental to their experience of the
economic issues.

NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN: ORGANIZED LABOR HASN’T ALWAYS TAKEN
WOMENS’ WORK SERIOUSLY; THIS IS ESPECIALLY THE CASE FOR IMMIGRANT
WOMEN AND WOMEN OF COLOR. EVEN TODAY, TOO MANY LOCALS SEEM LIKE THEY
ARE A BOY’S CLUB. WE JUST COVERED ONE WORKER, A SEMI TRUCK DRIVER
WHO HAD TO REALLY FIGHT HER UNION TO GET TO DO THE WORK SHE ON PAPER
HAD ALREADY BEEN GIVEN. HOW DO WE GRAPPLE WITH THIS LEGACY AND BUILD
TRUST WITH WORKERS WHO HAVE BEEN HISTORICALLY KEPT AT THE MARGINS OF
THE LABOR MOVEMENT? 

SARA NELSON: We ask these workers to lead. We’re intentional about
bringing them into spaces where their voices are heard, shine
a light, tell their stories. And that’s what the unions, in our
unions we can do that. In other spaces it’s very difficult for these
workers to speak up, because there’s so much more at risk, so much
more to lose, and someone’s got to break through to be able to tell
these stories. So, we have to start there, we have to give them that
space. I think also rank and file organizing is fundamental to this
idea, that we will practice and show workers that the labor movement,
which, frankly, is people who are in unions and people who want to be
in unions — so there’s there’s many more people who are part
of the labor movement, who are not currently, members
today — and so I think shining a light on those voices, and
telling those stories, as well as being very intentional about asking
them to be leaders in these spaces is what we have to do. 

"We tried to identify root causes of crime and tailor accountability.
Not to simply be a pseudonym for cage, but rather to look at changing
behavior, and to use the criminal case as an opportunity for
transforming lives away from crime, away from victimization and
poverty."

NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN: IT’S A REALLY EXCITING TIME IN THE LABOR
MOVEMENT, BUT WE’RE NOWHERE NEAR THE DENSITY WE NEED. WHAT ARE THE
KEY IMPEDIMENTS YOU SEE, AND HOW DO WE MAKE THE MOST OF THIS MOMENT?

SARA NELSON: Fundamentally, we need a lot more focus on organizing,
and it’s very difficult to ask workers who have organized and are
taking on their own fights and are contributing to their unions, to
say that we need to spend all your money on getting millions of other
people too. So we have to energize the workers who are already in
unions and fight for them in order to inspire others to come. I get
choked up about this stuff. It’s important. Waking to that, to your
power, is an overwhelming and inspiring thing. 

I think of Karen Lewis…the entire labor movement owes this moment to
Karen Lewis because she led a movement that said, ​“We’re
gonna do this differently, we’re going to fight for it differently.
We’re going to build a union that is for the teachers in the
classroom and for the children that we’re teaching, and build
a space that can be powerful for the entire community and find that
power all around that space.” And she said the word STRIKE, for the
first time in a long time. Strike had been made a dirty word by
Ronald Reagan and the corporate elite. And it gave workers, it shone
a light for workers that had been a very dark space before the
Chicago Teachers Strike in 2012. And that made it possible for other
workers to fight for their own power, even in spaces where they
don’t even have the right to collective bargaining, where a strike
is on paper illegal. And so we have to energize the workers who have
unions today, to inspire others to join and to give millions of
current members stories to tell about why being active in unions is
paramount for our lives.

The Teamsters contract campaign is fundamental to inspire many others
to join this movement. Bringing to the forefront the reality that
workers should be shaping the economy and setting the agenda will
inspire others to join because when they awake to the idea that they
don’t have to be beholden to the owner class and corporate elite
that they have power in their own right and can take control of that
and define their future, is the most important part of organizing. But
I don’t want to diminish the fact that we need money and resources
and people focused on organizing all the time. Because we can’t
forget that taking on these fights, gaining wins and getting advances
for people who are already in unions is a critical component to
inspiring the organizing that has to happen, and we can’t let that
be at war with the organizing and the resources that have to be pumped
into that to make it happen.

It’s all of those things together, and I think when we recognize
the fact that we can’t expect that the unions that exist today are
enough to meet the demand of the workers who want to organize and the
workers who need to organize, and we create spaces for any worker who
wants to join a union to have the resources and support to do that,
is how we’re going to build the labor movement. So it all comes
together, it’s all important, and we can’t talk about these things
as being in conflict with each other. They’re actually very
complementary. All of this discussion about what unions are doing to
spend money on organizing, all of that is really important. And it’s
important to spread the truth of solidarity. The reality is that
we’ll have to organize every single workspace. But we also have to
be realistic about where we’re going to get the resources and how
we’re going to continue to get the resources and provide the real
support that’s needed for workers who don’t yet have unions today,
while we continue to have the workers who do, fighting for it and
showing what is possible when workers come together.

_[NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN
[[link removed]] is the Audience
Engagement Editor at In These Times. A writer and organizer, her
work has appeared in The Guardian, Truthout, Rewire News, and Teen
Vogue. She is also the author of Abolish ICE.]_

_The new issue of In These Times is a special, extra-length issue
devoted entirely to the subject of socialism in America today. THIS
SPECIAL ISSUE IS AVAILABLE NOW. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY.
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_Reprinted with permission from In These Times
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* Sara Nelson
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* abortion rights
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* workers rights
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* labor rights
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* Labor Unions
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* Trade Unions
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* Labor strategy
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* Union density
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* Labor Movement
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* corporate profits
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* Corporate propaganda
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* Dobbs v. Jackson
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* Flight Attendants
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* Chicago teachers
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* UPS
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* Teamsters
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* Women
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* women workers
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