SWAPA President Captain Casey Murray issued a call for a Strike Authorization Vote from the Association’s membership. This historic action on the part of the pilot union comes in the wake of Southwest’s largest meltdown and the utter lack of meaningful progress on a contract negotiation, with scheduling work rules and information technology asks in particular, that has been ongoing for more than three years.
Captain Murray stated, “While your Board of Directors and Executive Officers have had many strategic discussions on timing, I think it is best to consider what our customers have been through over the past several years and the past several weeks. It was the lack of discussion or commitment by our leadership team to rectify these issues for our passengers and our pilots that drove us to make the decision to carry forward on this path afforded to us by the Railway Labor Act.”
The vote will take place beginning on May 1 and will ultimately give the pilots the ability to strike once released to self-help. Murray continued, “We believe that May 1 provides a date that allows our union time to prepare and gives our customers time to book elsewhere, so that they can have confidence that their summer vacations, honeymoons, and family outings are assured.”
The vote will be counted at the end of May.
Southwest’s response:
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association announced today its intention to call for a strike authorization vote on May 1, 2023.
“SWAPA’s call for an authorization vote does not affect Southwest’s operation or our ability to take care of our Customers,” said Adam Carlisle, Vice President Labor Relations at Southwest Airlines. “We will continue to follow the process outlined in the Railway Labor Act and work, under the assistance of the National Mediation Board, toward reaching an agreement that rewards our Pilots and places them competitively in the industry. The union’s potential vote does not hinder our ongoing efforts at the negotiating table. We are scheduled to resume mediation on January 24.”
As of October 2022, Southwest and the Union are engaged in negotiations with assigned mediators from the National Mediation Board. The mediators set the dates, location, and agenda for negotiating sessions and have continued to drive the parties toward closing out certain sections before addressing the more complex items in the contract.
The proposed vote does not affect operations in any way and is not an indication of an impending work stoppage. As always, the Southwest Team is focused on delivering a safe and reliable operation, along with our legendary Southwest Hospitality, to Customers.
Southwest Meltdown Detailed in New Podcast
New York Times podcast The Daily released this new podcast on January 10, covering the Southwest Airlines holiday meltdown.
Their description of the episode reads as follows:
Air travel was a mess over the holidays — in the last 10 days of December, 30,000 flights were canceled. While every airline was affected, one stood out: Southwest, which over the past few decades has transformed how Americans fly, melted down. In the last 10 days of the year, it canceled as many flights as it had done in the previous 10 months. So what went wrong?
Listen here: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily
Top Copyright Photo: Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 MAX 8 N8812Q (msn 42662) IAH (Jarrod Wilkening). Image: 958681.