May 29, 2018
Dear Southwest Aircraft Maintenance Technician and Related Members:
We hope you all had a great holiday weekend. As everyone should know by now, on April 10, 2018, AMFA and Southwest Airlines announced an agreement in principal (AIP). This did not stop the hard work by both sides to turn the AIP into to a Tentative Agreement (TA). Since that time, both sides have presented total language packages on the AIP, and as of our last update -- Update #64, dated May 5, 2018 -- the parties had identified about seventeen issues with each other’s language that needed to be worked out. We have continued to work with the Company to bring those issues to a close.
On Friday May 25, 2018, the Company came back to us and the number of open issues has been brought down to a few issues within a couple articles. In addition, we continue to request data from the Company to formulate the distribution methodology for your ratification bonus. This data is very important so that we can verify that each individual amount is correct and that the total is ninety-one million dollars. We are now working on a response to the Company on the remaining issues. We do not see any of them as insurmountable.
We understand emotions are high during this time and we ask for patience as we work to provide you with a comprehensive TA to vote on.
As we stated in our last update, once we have a final cover-to-cover TA, the document will be sent to you from Southwest via your SWALife email. The Committee will give you a week to review the TA, post a roadshow schedule, and then commence the roadshow. The TA ratification referendum will start after the conclusion of the roadshow. Further referendum details will be provided after a TA is reached.
Please do not hesitate to contact your AMFA representatives if you have additional questions.
Sincerely,
Your Negotiating Committee