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Delta workers hold rally for change
A group of Delta workers claims the Atlanta-based airline is trying to bust up their efforts to unionize. They rallied in downtown Tuesday evening, also raising complaints of racial discrimination and unfair treatment on the job.
ATLANTA - A Delta Air Lines employee claimed the company contradicts its own "Equal Justice Initiative" behind the scenes in a letter to her bosses.
Ramp worker Amanda Goodman Berry said she was on a flight as a paying customer when the plane’s monitors showed a video touting the company’s practices to promote diversity and inclusion.
"It was soul-crushing as my experience does not follow the words spoken to Delta passengers," Goodman Berry said. "[The job] comes with a lot of humiliation, retaliation, discrimination. It comes with being singled out. It comes with them making you feel like you don’t belong."
Delta Air Line workers rally in Atlanta Nov. 14, 2023 (FOX 5 Atlanta).
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She rallied alongside roughly a dozen airline coworkers and union organizers outside a union office in Downtown Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon, claiming the company had hampered their efforts to organize a union.
A spokesperson for the Atlanta-based company pushed back on some of those claims in an emailed statement.
"We support their right to choose whether or not a union is right for them. Claims that Delta interferes with employees’ right to choose union representation are false," said Delta spokesperson Anthony Black. "It is an important decision, and Delta complies to U.S. labor law, which permits the company to directly engage with employees about important issues, including sharing facts about representation, its impact on their work lives and their relationship with Delta."
Black added that Delta believes the company not having to deal with a union has "proven to be a stronger, faster, and more effective way to drive improvements."
The statement did not address Goodman Berry’s claims of systemic discrimination in the company.
"There are over 50,000 workers who are organizing across the country and that includes flight attendants, ramp workers, baggage handlers, and also mechanics," said Micah McClure, an organizer for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
Delta Air Lines Airbus (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Pilots are already covered under another union.
In late October, the company announced plans to lay off some office workers to cut costs. Delta posted a third-quarter profit of $1.1 billion, nearly 60% more than the previous year.
McClure said the group planned to travel to Memphis, Tennessee, to the National Civil Rights Museum in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s contribution to equality, justice, and labor organizing.
"We can appreciate Delta and the work that they’ve done to create a hub for travel here in the south, but we don’t have to allow that appreciation to forget their responsibility to their workers," McClure said.