American Airlines Flight Attendant Objects To Her Union’s Left-Wing Politics — But Still Must Pay Dues

I recently wrote about the Southwest Airlines flight attendant who successfully sued for her job back and $1 million after the airline and her union worked together to fire her because of her politics and her activism against union leadership.

She was a ‘nonmember objector’ who had resigned union membership. She still had to pay some union dues for their representation. But she objected to how the union was spending her dues on politics, like their involvement in the 2017 Women’s March, and their support for abortion which ran contrary to her religious beliefs.

Other airline flight attendant unions share similar leanings (though pilot unions often skew more conservative). One American Airlines flight attendant shares her frustration over the left-wing activism of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants this month for May Day – a union to which she’s required to pay dues,

After the May Day event, our union created a collage of video clip to post on their Instagram account.

Some of the clips were clearly left leaning in their political views. As a rule, employees are to keep political views to themselves and even though unions are known to be liberal, their role is to represent all employees especially in public.

Here’s a screen shot of the union highlighting ‘get rid of trump’ with 86 (get rid of) 47 (th President), the numbers for which former FBI Director James Comey is being prosecuted.

And here’s another complaining about Elon Musk, which is as far afield from airline union politics as one might get, showing the broad left-of-center views being expressed by flight attendants and endorsed by the union’s social accounts:

These are from May 1 “May Day” activism. May 1 became the global labor holiday spurred on by the Maymarket Affair and codified by the Second International.

• In May 1886, workers across the U.S. were striking for the eight hour workday. On May 3 in Chicago, police fired on strikers, killing at least two workers. In response, so-called anarchist labor leaders held a protest meeting at Haymarket Square. The meeting was nearly over, the crowd had dwindled, and it was considered peaceful, however police moved in to disperse it. Someone threw a bomb at police and police fired into the crowd. Seven to eight police officers were killed, and about 60 wounded. Four to eight civilians were killed, and 30 to 40 injured.

• Eight labor radicals were prosecuted for murder even though none were proven to have thrown the bomb. Seven were sentenced to death. Four of those were hanged, and three were pardoned six years later.

• To business, police, and much of the press, it confirmed fears of immigrant radicalism and anarchist violence. To labor movements and socialists worldwide, it became proof that the state and capital would crush workers demanding rights. May 1 was declared as Labor Day (ironically, in the U.S. celebrated in September) oby the Second International, the international coordinating body of organized socialism before World War I.

In communist states, May Day became a huge state holiday with parades, military displays, worker marches, and party rituals. For socialists and communists it celebrates worker struggle, class conflict, and revolutionary solidarity. To trade unions and social democrats, it’s about labor rights, wages, working conditions, and collective bargaining.

Ultimately, unions are political! Their strength isn’t just in worker solidarity, it’s in political activism. They can mobilize voters and political volunteers, and exercise political muscle. That’s important for:

• laws gatekeeping professions, driving up the time and cost it takes to enter which limits supply – both driving up wages, and also making it difficult for employers to hire replacement workers
  
• requiring employers to collectively bargain
  
• requiring employers to hire only union workers, either as a condition of government contracts or because of a vote of workers

To name just a few, the National Labor Relations Act gives employees the right to organize, join unions, bargain collectively through chosen representatives, and engage in concerted activity for “mutual aid or protection.” The Norris-LaGuardia Act limits the ability of courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes. And the Clayton Act gives unions antitrust safe harbor and protects picketing from being treated as restraint of trade.

A truly underappreciated Australian film about a union leader is Children of The Revolution (1996). An communist activist is invited to Moscow, where she sleeps with Joseph Stalin (played by F. Murray Abraham) on the last night of his life. She also sleeps with a spy played by Sam Neill that same night. She becomes pregnant. Her son grows up to become a police officer – but also union activist – and authoritarian figure. Is he dangerous because he is Stalin’s biological son, because he was raised to become a revolutionary union activist, or because political systems themselves create little Stalins?

Airlines are one of the most heavily unionized industries in the country. Each union member pays dues. Some of that goes to bargaining, some goes to dispute resolution with the company, but some naturally goes to lobbying and political activism. Who the President is matters, it determines who gets appointed to the National Mediation Board, which in turn determines whether an airline union can strike.

And unions then are going to turn out as part of political coalitions they believe advance their interests broadly, and also that reflect the opinions of either the median member or their leadership.

Since union dues are mandatory and workers are diverse it means that an employee’s dues are going to be spent not just on things they don’t believe it, but on things they actively morally oppose. Which is also why there’s objector status – and continued litigation over individual worker choice.