Overview
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is a federated labor union representing hundreds of thousands of members across multiple sectors and crafts in the United States and Canada. It operates as a union of unions, combining geographically based districts with industry-specific sectors.
The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) functions within this structure as a national industrial sector. Unlike most CWA affiliates, AFA is not organized through CWA’s geographic district system. Instead, it operates through a carrier-based, nationwide governance model designed to reflect the operational realities of the airline industry.
The earliest organized flight attendant union activity in the United States began in 1945 when flight attendants at United Airlines formed the Air Line Stewardess Association (later the Air Line Stewardesses & Stewards Association) to represent their interests in bargaining and workplace conditions. This group is widely recognized as the first union representing cabin crew, and its early efforts were associated with the Air Line Pilots Association’s steward/stewardess division.
In the early 1970s, flight attendants chose to establish an independent Association of Flight Attendants committed to direct member governance and unencumbered representation. AFA later received an AFL-CIO charter in the 1980s and, in 2004, affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), preserving its internal constitutional structure while operating as a sector within CWA’s broader framework.
In 2004, AFA affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. That affiliation preserved AFA’s internal constitution, representational pipeline, and bargaining architecture, while situating the organization within CWA’s broader constitutional framework. The result was a hybrid model: an autonomous, industry-specific sector operating inside a larger international union.
Analytical Significance
The governance structure of the (CWA), and its relationship with the (AFA), illustrates a distinct union model defined by embedded representation within a larger parent organization. Unlike independent single-carrier unions or nationally centralized models, AFA operates as an industrial sector nested inside a broader, multi-industry labor federation.
As this governance series develops, the CWA–AFA model serves as a critical comparative reference point, highlighting how layered authority and parent-union constitutional constraints shape bargaining strategy, internal accountability, and member responsiveness differently than the centralized (APFA), federated (IAM), decentralized (IBT), or national–divisional (TWU) models examined elsewhere in this series.