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Southwest Flight Attendants Strike Back, Deny Intent to Block Larger Airplanes

By Brett Snyder

Updated on: September 1, 2010 / 6:35 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

A couple of weeks ago, I pondered whether the flight attendants would end up blocking Southwest's (LUV) efforts to fly larger airplanes. The backlash to the post was stiff, as you would expect from an airline that requires its people to have the Warrior Spirit. Transport Workers Union Local 556 (the Southwest flight attendant union) even sent an official response saying that it's absolutely not true. You can read the response here (PDF). In the end, actions speak louder than words, so all eyes should be on the Dec. 1 deadline.

If you haven't read the original piece, I'd recommend doing that first. Stick around for the comments if you're interested in some, ahem, "lively" discussion. Then come on back and we'll look at the response in chunks.

You are certainly entitled to your view that a new, larger aircraft, with new safety and technical requirements, a larger number of passengers, additional training, and an additional flight attendant does require any opening our contract to negotiate rates of pay, rules and working conditions, but agreement with Southwest Airlines requires it. Our union and our company take honoring our commitments very seriously.

I'm afraid that the way I wrote my post may have focused too much on this piece. Yes, I readily admit that I wasn't aware that it required the contract to be reopened, but that's not really my biggest issue here. The bigger issue is why this is being discussed publicly at all. (It's not like Southwest was, say, announcing service to Newark.) There's no reason for it. To that end, the TWU responds:

You seem to be troubled by the fact that we put out a press release and the timing of its release. We coordinated with the company and our pilots union to release the information at the same time. I don't know why SWA and SWAPA did not issue a press release however I do know that SWA did do an investor relations release. TWU Local 556 did a news release that was almost identical to our member communication as a public sign of support and to eliminate speculation on where we stood. You seem to believe that we should have waited until after we had an agreement to announce our intent to acquire bigger planes. Whether or not this process is newsworthy is obviously up to your judgment as a professional journalist, however we have often publicly supported moves by our company that we believe are in the best interest of our members and our customers. We take great pride in our labor/management relations and try to do our part to maintain that relationship.

This still doesn't really explain why this is being discussed publicly. I can find no record of any formal release from the company, including nothing via the Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database, but there was a blog post put out on the subject. The pilots, however, didn't say a word until yesterday -- and even then they issued a very guarded response.)

It was that blog post that got my wheels turning in the first place. Why would Southwest start talking about something it's only thinking about doing? There is no reason for the public to know about this until it's really happening. Any other airline would talk about it when there was an order to announce. And that's why I started wondering why they'd bother.

When the flight attendant release was blasted out to the media (and landed in my inbox), it was time to connect the dots. There's no other reason the company would talk about this unless it was an effort to bring it into the spotlight for labor reasons.

Of course, that doesn't sound like the Southwest way of doing things, but it's the best explanation I can come up with. The TWU response concludes:

In addition to saying that we are excited about this opportunity, we also stated "Our union supports the expansion and growth of Southwest Airlines." and, "If we are able to come to agreement, we hope that this new chapter in the story of Southwest Airlines will bring new opportunities and continued success for us all." These don't sound like statements from a labor group trying to block anything.

No, they don't, but releases don't always play it straight either. If everything put out publicly was plain and simple, there would be no need for opinion pieces in the world. It's quite clear what Southwest and the union said, but is that what they actually mean? We'll find out.

If an agreement is reached by the Dec. 1 deadline, then that's great for everyone. After all, I'm sure those 737-800s would look mighty nice in Newark. Let's talk about this again in a couple months.

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Photo via Flickr user randomduck, CC 2.0