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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – As Southwest Airways continues to clean up the mess left behind by its Christmas journey fiasco, the service faces a brand new problem – a possible pilots’ strike.
The Southwest Airways pilots’ union called for a strike vote on Wednesday.
“This is not about pilots as a lot because it’s in regards to the soul of Southwest Airways,” mentioned Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airways Pilots Affiliation (SWAPA). “It is about offering what our mandate is, which is secure and dependable transportation, and reliability shouldn’t be there immediately, and our clients deserve higher. Our workers deserve higher.”
Greater than 10,000 pilots represented by the Southwest Airways Pilots Affiliation will start voting on Could 1 whether or not to authorize a strike.
The union has been in negotiations with the airline for a brand new contract for greater than three years and looks like issues have stalled.
Southwest pilots did picket last summer, calling for higher scheduling and tech updates, however that is the primary time SWAPA has ever referred to as for strike authorization.
The historic motion comes within the wake of the airways’ Christmas-week disaster. Murray hopes it is a wake-up name for Southwest Airways.
“We work arduous, and we need to make these inefficiencies aren’t the norm they usually cannot be the norm for the continued survival of Southwest Airways,” Murray mentioned.
To stop one other meltdown, the corporate has budgeted greater than a billion {dollars} to improve its outdated computer systems techniques.
Murray says the airline’s issues go a lot deeper.
“How they’re utilizing pilots and flight attendants,” he mentioned. “How they’re connecting pilots to airplanes. That is the place they’re failing. You’ll be able to spend a billion {dollars} on IT, but when the processes are the identical, you are going to get the identical output.”
The SWAPA pilots’ votes can be counted on the finish of Could. In the event that they approve the strike, it will nonetheless require clearance from federal labor officers, which might take months.
Within the meantime, clients are hopeful the airline can attain an settlement with the pilots’ union as a substitute.
“We’re loyal, and we’ll grasp in there,” mentioned Casey Graves, a Southwest Airways passenger. “If issues occur, they occur, and we have now to make final minute adjustments – we’ll do this.”
Adam Carlisle, VP Labor Relations at Southwest Airways, launched this assertion on the strike authorization:
“The Southwest Airways Pilots Affiliation’s name for an authorization vote doesn’t have an effect on Southwest’s operation or our capability to handle our Clients. We are going to proceed to comply with the method outlined within the Railway Labor Act and work, underneath the help of the Nationwide Mediation Board, towards reaching an settlement that rewards our Pilots and locations them competitively within the business.
“The union’s potential vote doesn’t hinder our ongoing efforts on the negotiating desk. We’re scheduled to renew mediation on January 24.”
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