Cease and Desist Letter Sent to Blogger for False and Defamatory Attack on Our Union

Cease and Desist Letter Sent to Blogger for False and Defamatory Attack on Our Union

May 11, 2024 — Our union sent a cease and desist letter to blogger Gary Leff today who consistently attacks our union and misrepresents our work and positions when holding management accountable.

This isn’t the first and likely won’t be the last time he’ll try to profit by making salacious, shocking, or outright made up statements about our union, our leaders, or Flight Attendants in general. Ignoring him is typically the best policy. This blogger makes money off website clicks and credit card applications – so he has a personal financial incentive to sensationalize to drive traffic to his website. For him, he’s not trying to report facts - he’s looking for emotional reactions that create an immediate click on his article/website. 

The cease and desist letter sent today is the result of egregious statements claiming our union president supports terrorists, or pro-terror speech. The opposite is true. The statement condemns “violence and hate in all its forms” and leads with recognition of the 54th year since students of Kent State were murdered by the National Guard while protesting to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The statement also importantly points to the right to protest as fundamental to our labor rights.  

As a union, we have an obligation to stand up and defend our fundamental rights to protest and assemble — a key pillar of labor rights. This is directly relevant today for the nearly 100,000 Flight Attendants fighting for contracts through picketing, rallies, and/or preparing to strike, if released. 

Other examples of derogatory, offensive, or false statements by Leff about Flight Attendants include this sampling:

  • “None of this should be surprising to flight attendants who went to training at a truck stop off the freeway in Wyoming because it’s cheaper than Denver.” About Frontier Flight Attendants, April 3, 2024
  • “I’m not sure that the name badge is the key here, though. It really just prevents passengers from reporting individual crew members by name for their behavior while commuting or in the airport.” About United Flight Attendants concerned for their safety, March 6, 2024
  • “Union flight attendants don’t benefit when their colleagues shirk on their duties inflight, it leaves more work for them and that extra work is something created by union job protections for underperformers.” May 1, 2022
  • “Demographics of AA flight attendant age and seniority,” focusing on age and seniority of Flight Attendants when others were facing furlough, April 16, 2020
  • “The AFA-CWA, which is trying to organize flight attendants at Delta, reports that over 90% of their members are unhappy with their jobs at United,” Repeatedly misrepresents what United AFA Flight Attendants said about management over 2 years ago

Bottom line: don’t click. He makes money from your reactions and his actions show he’s willing to mischaracterize, defame, degrade, lie, and use any means to get you to say “What????” because that often leads to a click and that traffic is what he’s trying to drive. 

We need to stay focused on denying union busters the ability to divide and distract us from our goals - the record breaking contracts we are due and the safe workplaces we must ensure through the power we have by standing together and fighting forward at every single airline. 

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