Flight attendants at start-up carrier Breeze have voted overwhelmingly to unionize. The National Mediation Board (NMB) certified the election results on Tuesday, confirming that 76.3% of the airline’s flight attendants supported joining the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA). This decision will now see the roughly 600 flight attendants at the Utah-based airline represented by the union.
The campaign for unionization was notably swift, with flight attendants filing for an election just two weeks after announcing their intention to join the AFA. According to the union, flight attendants faced an “aggressive anti-union campaign run by management up to the CEO with consultants from Ford and Harrison.”
AFA International President Sara Nelson touted the vote in a press release. “Breeze Flight Attendants filed for an election two weeks after taking their campaign public in January and kept organizing together to turn out a clear mandate to address their concerns at work. Today they gain the legal right to bargain and have a voice in their future at Breeze. We are inspired by their solidarity and thrilled to welcome them to our AFA family,” she said.
Breeze Airways, founded in 2021 by serial airline entrepreneur David Neeleman, employs over 650 flight attendants. The airline reported its first profitable month in March of 2024 along with a unit revenue increase of over 30% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2024.
The unionization of Breeze Airways flight attendants follows a similar successful effort by the airline’s pilots, who voted to unionize with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) in August 2022. The company and its pilots are currently in the process of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
In response to the vote, a spokesperson for Breeze Airways added, “Although this was not the outcome we had hoped for, we pledge to work alongside the AFA and our Flight Attendants to build on the already tremendous success of our young airline.”
The majority of U.S.-based flight attendants are unionized with the AFA representing over 50,000 at 20 different carriers. Cabin crew at Delta and SkyWest are among the non-union minority.
