The Ascent Of Sara Nelson

Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson has become the most prominent labor leader in america. Now she’s poised to help the entire labor movement take off.

- By Morgan Clendaniel

Sara nelson was supposed to be accepting a lifetime achievement award from the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions. After a brief video played of her speaking out against sexism and harassment in the airline industry, Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, took the stage on that January 2019 day and didn’t mention the issue once. Instead, Nelson delivered a stem-winder about the ongoing government shutdown that had begun on december 22. A budgetary impasse had been forcing 800,000 federal workers to report for duty without pay for 30 days. As agents from the transportation security administration gradually stopped showing up for work, Nelson’s voice had grown louder in calling for the end of the stalemate, speaking on behalf of an alliance she’d forged of pilots, baggage handlers, and other airline workers whose safety was now at risk. She extolled the power of workers and told them directly to stop working until the paychecks started flowing again.

Then she uttered the seven words that have defined her since: “End this shutdown with a general strike.”