Southwest Airlines flight attendants picketed Tuesday and at 10 airports airports across the country as contract negotiations stalled following a difficult summer for the air travel industry.
At Dallas Love Field in Texas, holding signs reading “Boarding pay without delay” and “Another victim of SWA’s outdated technology,” the Transport Workers Union Local 556, the union for 18,000 flight attendants at Dallas-based Southwest, pushed their contract fight for pay raises and scheduling improvements in front of passengers at the airport where the carrier is headquartered.
“The job has really degraded over the years and we need to see changes to fatiguing shifts, like 24-hour calls, we need to be able to get home and we’re supposed to get home,” said TWU Local 556 President Lyn Montgomery. “And if we don’t get home, we’re supposed to get home and even be compensated for the overtime that we’re putting in.”
The informational picketing coincided with demonstrations by the Association of Flight Attendants, the nation’s largest union for aircraft crew members, including flight attendants at Chicago-based United.
Several of Southwest’s other major unions, including those for pilots and customer service workers, are also at an impasse with the company over contract negotiations.
The flight attendants’ union has filed for a federal mediator to intervene to help push negotiations along. Pilots also filed for similar mediation this month. Flight attendants at all U.S. airlines are prohibited from striking without going through a long process overseen by the federal government.
Flight attendant union leaders say problems from the summer of 2021 have spilled over into 2022 as the company increased flying. Southwest’s on-time arrival rate has dropped to 73.1% for the first seven months of 2022, the Department of Transportation reported this week.
While hundreds and possibly thousands of flight attendants will be picketing across the country, the demonstrations shouldn’t impact scheduled flights. The flight attendants demonstrating are not scheduled to work today.
“Southwest Airlines has an award-winning culture that respects our employees and encourages them to express their opinions,” said Southwest Airlines vice president of labor relations Adam Carlisle. “Informational picketing is common during contract negotiations, and we do not anticipate any disruption in service resulting from the demonstration planned by off-duty flight attendants.”
Parrish said the airline looks forward to “continuing negotiations with TWU 556 and the National Mediation Board so that we can reward our flight attendants and continue attracting great talent.”
Southwest Airlines has been on a hiring binge over the last 18 months, adding more than 10,000 employees since January. It now has more employees than it did during the same period in 2019, the first major airline to do so. A majority of those workers have been in operational roles, the company said.
Airlines including Southwest, American, United and Delta are all facing contract negotiations with major work groups after putting off discussions during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now talks are ramping back up again as profits return to the airline industry amid high demand and rising ticket prices.
