Southwest Airlines Pilot Association (SWAPA) President Captain Casey Murray announced Wednesday that the union is calling for a strike authorization vote on May 1, with votes to be counted at the end of May. If the majority of SWAPA votes to authorize a strike, Southwest pilots represented by SWAPA will be released to “self-help” and be able to strike.
Murray stated that the union chose May 1 to begin the vote because it would give both the union and Southwest’s customers time to prepare and “to book elsewhere, so that they can have confidence that their summer vacations, honeymoons, and family outings are assured.”
Referencing Southwest’s recent large meltdown, resulting in Southwest canceling more than 15,000 flights during the 2022 holiday season, Murray also 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.
In addition to the issues related to the meltdown, SWAPA stated there has been an “utter lack of meaningful progress on a contract negotiation.” In particular, SWAPA is seeking changes to rules regarding work scheduling and updates to Southwest’s IT and software, which Murray claimed contributed to Southwest’s holiday shutdown.
In response to SWAPA’s announcement, Southwest stated that SWAPA’s announcement would not “hinder our ongoing efforts at the negotiating table” and that the proposed vote “does not affect operations in any way and is not an indication of an impending work stoppage.” SWAPA and Southwest began mediation in October 2022, facilitated by the National Mediation board, and are scheduled to resume mediation on January 24, 2023.
SWAPA’s call for a strike authorization vote is its first ever since the union was founded in 1978. SWAPA, headquartered in Dallas, is the sole bargaining unit for all Southwest pilots, and represents nearly 10,000 pilots. The Railway Labor Act controls airline union negotiations, and according to the act’s terms, contracts for pilots do not expire but instead become amenable on certain dates. The current employment contract for pilots at Southwest became amendable in September 2020 with a March 1, 2020, early opener option. Thus, contract negotiations between SWAPA and Southwest officially started in March 2020, but negotiations were put on hold due to COVID-19 and resumed in April 2021.
