Sara Nelson

Vocation

American union leader, currently the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 1 June 2014. A United Airlines flight attendant since 1996, she previously served as AFA's International Vice President for a term beginning on 1 January 2011. Today, AFA-CWA represents nearly 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines. In nearly 10 years as the AFA union's chief spokesperson for United flight attendants, Nelson played a central role in the union's strategic response to every major event affecting the airline industry and, by extension, the members she helped to represent. In 2002, a year after the devastating impact of the September 11 Attacks rocked the airline industry, the SARS outbreak devastated international air travel. Airlines including United Airlines undertook cost cutting measures, and Nelson served as the primary spokesperson for the union during those extensive pre-bankruptcy reorganization negotiations. By December 2002 when United Airlines filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, Nelson was leading both the internal and external communications response to what would become one of the longest corporate bankruptcies when it finally ended over three years later. When United used the bankruptcy to terminate the flight attendants pension plan, Nelson announced AFA's intent to engage in a strike. Nelson also led AFA's No Knives Ever Again Campaign in 2013. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) subsequently reversed its decision to allow knives on passenger flights, after first announcing it would lift the knife ban. On 12 August 2014 Nelson was elected to the Aviation Steering Committee of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), the global federation of transportation unions from 148 countries, representing a combined membership of 4.5 million, at the ITF Congress in Sofia, Bulgaria. Link to Wikipedia biography