Summary
- Southwest Airlines Pilots Association’s request to be released from contract negotiations has been denied, leaving them with no choice but to proceed with negotiations.
- The National Mediation Board decided that negotiations must continue.
- SWAPA had expressed dissatisfaction with several of management’s actions, such as threatening to furlough pilots while accepting significant stock compensation, among others.
Southwest Airlines Pilots Associations’ request to leave negotiations proceedings has been denied. The carrier’s pilots have several grievances with the management, and no amicable agreement has been reached through previous talks. With a denial of the request, the carrier’s pilots association will now have to proceed with negotiations regarding their contract.
Request denied
Southwest Airlines Pilots Associations’ (SWAPA) attempt to free itself from contract negotiations with the management has been denied by the National Mediation Board (NMB). This comes more than a month after the association wrote to NMB for a release from discussion.
Had the request been granted, the release from mediation would have triggered a 30-day cooling-off period before a Presidential Emergency Board or release to self-help, such as a strike under US labor law.
Photo: Angel DiBilio/Shutterstock
This leaves Southwest’s pilots with no choice but to enter negotiations in the coming days regarding their contract. Captain Casey Murray, president of SWAPA, told Bloomberg News that he is disappointed but not surprised, adding, “We are further away today than the day we filed for release, which is truly the definition of an impasse.”
SWAPA had applied for a release from discussions stating that it believed further mediation would likely not result in any additional agreements between the parties. NMB, however, differed in its assessment of the situation and decided that negotiations needed to continue. Southwest had also objected to the request in June, with its management releasing a statement:
“We strongly disagree that we’re at a point which justifies either party asking to be released from mediation. We’ve continued meeting regularly with SWAPA and, in fact, made an industry-leading compensation proposal and scheduling adjustments to address workplace quality-of-life issues for our pilots. We feel confident that mediation will continue driving us even closer to a final agreement that will benefit both our Pilots and Southwest Airlines.”
Photo: Jeramey Lende/Shutterstock
Dissatisfied
SWAPA’s previous negotiations with Southwest’s management have not yielded any positive results. There have, in fact, been several areas of discontentment among its pilots. In its letter to NMB, SWAPA highlighted the carrier’s disregard of NMB’s instructions with no penalty.
It also expressed its dissatisfaction over some of management’s actions, such as a threat to furlough 1,221 pilots when, just two months later, executive leaders accepted at least $4 million in stock compensation. The association highlighted that “revenue that allowed for those bonuses and dividends to be paid could not have been earned but for the hard-work and dedication of our Pilots and front-line employees.”
Photo: Don Mammoser | Shutterstock
In 2022, SWAPA had also written an open letter to Southwest detailing how fatigue numbers among the pilots had been on the rise with no meaningful attempt by the management to mitigate them. SWAPA said that since 2017, it has identified and also offered solutions to address numerous systemic failures in the airline’s network and scheduling processes that had gone out of control.
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Source: Bloomberg
