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Negotiating Committee Update - December 1, 2023

Negotiating Committee Update - December 1, 2023

December 04, 2023

Yesterday was November 30, the date the NMB set for SWAPA and Southwest Airlines to reach an agreement. After a full week of negotiations, we can report that we have the makings of a deal within reach, but we are still not across the finish line.

 

As we wrapped up our new Information Technology section this morning, we closed out the last language section of what we hope will be our new Contract. Just a few definitions remain open to fine-tune. We have been diligently writing language as we have gone, but because we have achieved our goal of a completely rewritten CBA, we still have a lot of proofing, validating, and cross-checking to do. That cleanup will take time to get right. In the meantime, we have a lot of work to do on implementation and member education products.

 

Implementation, for those of you who have never gone through the process before, is a critical part of any new CBA. The huge number of changes required by C2020 will cause massive modifications in the way the Company conducts many of its processes. Not all of them will happen immediately upon ratification. Some changes, like a training bid and all of its tentacles — pay, trading, tracking annual move-ups — will need to be built from the ground up. Others, like updates to our disability plan, require legal review and filings.

 

Our job now is to push the Company to commit to implementing the changes that they have agreed to and establish a timeline for our board and our Pilots to consider as they evaluate the deal. Even an industry-leading contract will be in jeopardy of failure if it takes six and a half years to implement.

 

The IT requirements in our proposal are substantial, and it’s undeniable that it will take time to get everything programmed. Therefore, we have to prioritize the technology changes and then determine with the Company what processes can be done manually until automated or what will have to wait until the tech is in place. The Company will have to deliver a long list of items effective at ratification if we want this deal to get ratified.

 

The implementation is a negotiation of its own, and that’s why we can’t say today that we have a deal. We are committed to capturing the big-ticket items as close to date of ratification as possible. The Company, by contrast, has to avoid under-delivering on their implementation promises as we are seeing at OALs. Our Pilots have waited almost four years for the right deal, and we know they will continue to stand with us and wait for us to get it right.

 

Next week, we will be splitting our time between Company meetings and briefing our board on the highlights of the potential deal and the few remaining obstacles between us and an AIP. Once those are resolved, we will be ready to take it to the BOD with the expectation of their approval and make it a Tentative Agreement for your consideration.

 

Negotiating Committee

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