1. Why Structure Matters
To understand how AFA operates within the Communications Workers of America (CWA), it is first necessary to understand how CWA organizes itself. CWA does not rely on a single hierarchy. Instead, it uses two intersecting structural axes — industrial sectors and geographic districts — each designed to address a different organizational and representational problem.
Most CWA members belong to a local that is situated within both an industrial sector and a geographic district. AFA is a notable exception. This report explains why that exception exists and how it was deliberately created.
2. Industrial Sectors: Organizing by Type of Work
Industrial sectors are the primary way CWA groups members according to the work they perform and the industries in which they operate. Sectors exist because bargaining strategy, safety regulation, legal frameworks, and employer behavior vary significantly by industry.
Examples of CWA industrial sectors include telecommunications, media and broadcasting, public sector employment, manufacturing, healthcare, and airlines. Each sector concentrates subject-matter expertise and develops strategies specific to that industry. Sectors operate as the primary locus for industry-specific strategy rather than as a secondary administrative layer.
Functions of Industrial Sectors
| Function | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Industry strategy | Develop bargaining priorities and campaign strategy tailored to the employer landscape and regulatory environment. |
| Subject-matter expertise | Concentrate technical knowledge (safety, scheduling regimes, credentialing, federal rules) that varies sharply by industry. |
| Coordinated bargaining | Support pattern bargaining and cross-employer leverage where industry conditions make coordination effective. |
| Political & regulatory engagement | Target legislative and agency advocacy to the oversight bodies most relevant to that sector. |
| Resource allocation | Direct staff time, legal support, communications, and organizing capacity into industry-specific priorities. |
In practice, sectors are not merely “labels.” They act as the internal mechanism by which CWA adapts its national resources to very different industries. This matters because AFA’s bargaining and representational environment is fundamentally different from most CWA locals.
3. Geographic Districts: Organizing by Place
Geographic districts are the second structural axis. While sectors organize by type of work, districts organize by where members live and where locals are chartered. Districts provide a regional governance layer that supports coordination across locals in the same area.
Districts typically serve governance and political functions: they facilitate regional meetings, leadership development, community coalitions, and coordinated state or local advocacy. In many unions, geographic structure is the default. In CWA, it exists alongside — not instead of — the industrial sector system.
Functions of Geographic Districts
| Function | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Regional coordination | Connect locals across a common geographic footprint for shared governance and solidarity. |
| Political infrastructure | Organize state and local legislative efforts and coalitions that are inherently place-based. |
| Leadership development | Provide training pipelines, regional conferences, and support networks for local officers. |
| Administrative oversight | Offer a district-level layer for dispute resolution, coordination, and continuity across locals. |
Most CWA members experience both axes at once: they belong to a local, their local is part of a sector, and it is also situated within a district. This creates overlapping support structures and a multi-level channel for representation.
4. The Intersection: How the Two Axes Normally Work Together
In a typical CWA configuration, a member’s representation flows through a local (the primary unit), then upward through both a sector structure (for industry strategy) and a district structure (for regional governance). These layers coexist because CWA has members in industries where the “work problem” and the “place problem” are both decisive.
The system also functions as an internal constraint mechanism: authority is distributed across multiple layers rather than concentrated in a single centralized chain. That distribution becomes especially relevant when we examine AFA’s position.
5. Why AFA Is an Exception
AFA does not sit neatly inside the district system because the airline industry does not map cleanly onto geography. Flight attendants are nationally mobile, often based in one city, living in another, and operating across the entire network. Their workplace issues are also shaped by federal law and national carrier-level bargaining dynamics rather than local labor markets.
As a result, AFA operates as a national sector — structurally aligned to the industry axis — without being embedded in the district framework the way most CWA locals are. This is not a historical accident; it reflects an intentional design choice that treats airline representation as an industry-governance problem rather than a place-governance problem.
6. Why This Matters for Governance
Once you see the dual-axis structure, AFA’s governance profile becomes clearer: it draws strength from CWA’s national resources and institutional depth while operating outside the geographic district structure that normally supplies regional accountability and layered representation.
The next reports in this series build on this foundation by showing how authority and constraint actually operate in practice — and why AFA’s sector position produces distinctive trade-offs in autonomy, representation, and internal accountability.