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Early in the pandemic, the U.S. airline industry basically shut down.
That posed all kinds of threats, not the least of which to the jobs of 50,000 flight attendants. The president of the Association of Flight Attendants, Sara Nelson, worked furiously to save those jobs.
The current edition of The New Yorker includes a behind-the-scenes look at how communication between Nelson, who grew up in Corvallis, and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, led Congress to rescue the airline industry.
Doug Parker, then-CEO of American Airlines, told New Yorker writer Jennifer Gonnerman how it happened:
“Having a labor leader [Nelson] sit around with five C.E.O.s and work through how we’re going to stop airlines from shutting down was a pretty big deal.”
In the days before their meeting with Nelson, he said, he and the other airline executives had been focussed on one person: Representative DeFazio.
Parker recalled that the C.E.O.s kept tossing out ideas and saying variations of the same line: “I wonder if DeFazio will accept this.”
Read the story here to find out how Nelson helped make sure DeFazio could live with the industry’s proposal. You can hear some of DeFazio’s other tales from four decades on Capitol Hill this Thursday, June 2, at First Congregational Church in Portland. The event is sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society and WW.
