CWA-AFA · Flight-attendant sector
Delta Organizing: History, Funding Evidence and Disclosure Limits
Primary-source milestones, retained financial history and the records needed for a Delta-specific cost total.
Evidence reviewed through .
A documented campaign history with a specific funding lead
Primary records establish several distinct Delta organizing episodes. The strongest additional financial lead is CWA’s SIF 726 research project, which expressly included Delta organizing. The reviewed records do not supply a complete Delta-specific expenditure total. Sector-wide spending and membership figures cannot fill that gap.
Dated primary-source history
| Date | What the primary record establishes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| August 29, 2001 | AFA filed an application to represent Delta flight attendants. This predates the CWA merger, so AFA is the historical name for this event. | NMB 30 NMB No. 18, December 12, 2002, PDF page 1 |
| 2010–2011 | The NMB decision recounts the July 1, 2010 application concerning the combined Delta–Northwest flight-attendant group. The November 3, 2010 tally did not produce a majority for representation; the application was dismissed November 4. On November 18, 2011, the NMB rejected the later election-interference challenge. | NMB 39 NMB No. 8, November 18, 2011, PDF pages 1–2 |
| November 1, 2019 | CWA-AFA announced a new Delta flight-attendant representation campaign. | CWA-AFA campaign announcement |
| November 21, 2022 | CWA-AFA, IAM and the Teamsters announced coordinated Delta organizing. | Joint campaign announcement |
| January 18, 2024 | The Teamsters reported a joint Congressional Labor Caucus briefing with CWA-AFA and IAM. | Teamsters event report |
These are selected, dated milestones. They do not establish uninterrupted activity or a continuous budget across the entire period, and no current representation status or campaign ranking is inferred from an earlier event. The Delta–Northwest airline integration is distinct from AFA’s merger with CWA.
What CWA’s fund report adds
The 2025 Defense Fund Oversight Committee report says SIF 726 supplied a corporate campaign researcher whose work included Delta organizing, United bargaining and regional boarding pay. This is affirmative evidence of CWA-funded support. The narrative does not disclose the project’s expenditure or Delta allocation, so the whole project cannot be assigned to Delta.
Sources: 2025 Defense Fund Oversight Committee report, PDF page 8.
Sector financial context, with source status
The following figures preserve the earlier page’s annual context. Dollar amounts are rounded to millions as previously displayed; the fiscal years end May 31. FY2024 is checked against the preserved sector report. FY2023 and FY2025 remain prior site transcriptions whose original bodies have not been recovered in this review. None of these measures is a Delta campaign budget.
| Measure | FY2023 — historical | FY2024 — preserved original | FY2025 — historical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Representational activities | $16.78 million | $19.49 million | $19.85 million |
| Reported members | 45,500 | 49,452 | 50,362 |
| Dues and agency fees — Item 36 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Other Receipts — Item 48 | $24.27 million | $28.11 million | $28.88 million |
Sources: FY2023 sector record 871851; preserved FY2024 report, membership on page 2 and Statement B on page 4; FY2025 sector record 922215. See the full annual financial history and coverage limits.
The zero in Item 36 is this reporting entity’s receipt classification. The FY2024 filing separately records CWA affiliate funding and contribution receipts in Schedule 14; the zero does not mean members paid no dues. Broad representational disbursements include work beyond Delta. A carrier name in a vendor or travel entry also requires a documented project purpose before it can be assigned to organizing.
Sources: FY2024 sector Schedule 14, PDF page 41.
Parent and United observations: no inferred funding share
| Measure | FY2023 — historical | FY2024 — checked lines | FY2025 — historical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dues and agency-fee receipts | $117.76 million | $124.22 million | $128.51 million |
| Reported members | 648,305 | 663,346 | 682,324 |
FY2023 and FY2025 parent amounts remain prior site transcriptions with unrecovered complete report bodies. The preserved FY2024 parent copy supports the displayed receipt and membership lines but is incomplete overall. Its membership total includes retiree categories. Parent receipts and sector receipts cannot simply be added when money passes between the reporting entities.
Sources: Preserved FY2024 parent LM-2; parent filing identities and coverage; parent FY2023 historical detail; parent FY2025 historical detail.
The earlier page recorded 25,692 United MEC members for the year ended May 31, 2024. That figure is retained as a dated historical observation, without a new review of its original body. The directory also contains a FY2025 United MEC report link, 921013; FY2024 should therefore not be described as the latest located record. A linked record is not a claim that its full contents were independently recovered in this review.
Sources: FY2024 United MEC record 896360; FY2025 United MEC record 921013; United filing directory.
The FY2024 United observation and FY2025 sector membership total describe different reporting dates. They do not establish a United funding percentage. Even membership counts for the same period would require actual dues, remittance and service-allocation records before they could support an attribution of Delta costs to United members.
What would produce a defensible Delta cost total?
- Recover the complete annual sector and parent filing bodies and project records for the relevant periods, including FY2023 onward.
- Obtain SIF 726’s funding authorization, actual spending and allocation of researcher time among Delta, United and regional work.
- Identify Delta-coded staff time, counsel, research, travel, communications and organizing invoices, including costs paid outside the sector.
- Reconcile coalition cost sharing and reimbursements so transfers are not counted a second time as new campaign spending.
- Separate the resulting cost record from any claim about election outcomes, bargaining gains or the net benefit of the CWA merger.
As of the review cutoff, the linked records establish activity and a specific parent-funding lead. The missing allocation records prevent a complete cost calculation; they do not establish zero support.